A Unified Model of Spatial Price Discrimination

Eleftheriou, Konstantinos and Michelacakis, Nickolas (2016): A Unified Model of Spatial Price Discrimination.

Abstract

The welfare effects of regulation are of crucial importance to policy makers. To this end, we present a model of n firms with differentiated costs competing in a linear market within the framework of spatial price discrimination. We prove that the Nash equilibrium locations of firms are always socially optimal irrespective of the number of competitors, the distribution of consumers, firms' cost heterogeneity, the level of privatization and the number and/or the varieties of the produced goods. We also provide an algorithm on how to find the unique Nash equilibrium in the case of uniformly distributed consumers.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Mixed oligopoly; Social optimality; Spatial competition; Differentiated goods
• Subjects: L - Industrial Organization > L1 - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance > L13 - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets; L - Industrial Organization > L3 - Nonprofit Organizations and Public Enterprise > L32 - Public Enterprises ; Public-Private Enterprises; L - Industrial Organization > L3 - Nonprofit Organizations and Public Enterprise > L33 - Comparison of Public and Private Enterprises and Nonprofit Institutions ; Privatization ; Contracting Out; R - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics > R3 - Real Estate Markets, Spatial Production Analysis, and Firm Location > R32 - Other Spatial Production and Pricing Analysis

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