Loss Aversion, Price and Quality

The Spence model (1975) is extended so that customers’ utility depends on their disposition to the firm in addition to quantity and quality of the good consumed. Disposition is determined by customers’ perception of firm’s pricing and quality decisions, which perception is ‘reference dependent’. The profit maximising and efficient price and quality combinations are derived. Adjustment to a change in economic conditions may call for price rigidity, quality rigidity or both depending on the level of the reference price and qualityLoss Aversion, monopoly pricing, quality

Bringing Competition to Urban Water Supply

This paper proposes a market-based reform that would introduce competition into the provision of urban water. This proposal calls for a decoupling of infrastructure control and ownership of water whereby the property rights to water would be transferred to private hands. The proposal involves periodically allocation (e.g. by auction) of existing water stock held in urban catchments to virtual suppliers who then compete in providing bulk water. This change when coupled with effective third party access and retail competition would lead to a competitive market for the provision of urban water. The approach aims to address concerns over inefficient pricing and infrastructure provision under the current arrangement.Water Utilities, Efficient Water Pricing, Water Provider Competition

An Integrated Approach to Teaching Price Discrimination

Textbooks present the three 'degrees' of price discrimination as a sequence of independent pricing methods and consequently provide inadequate insight as to when a firm might adopt a particular pricing strategy. The paper describes a taxonomy of the various mechanisms of price discrimination, which can be used to teach monopolistic price discrimination in an integrated way. The pricing strategy adopted by firms is based on (i) the information on consumer demand available to it and (ii) whether the firm has the ability to conduct non-linear pricing. The paper proposes a method for ranking profit and efficiency levels under different price discrimination strategies. The proposed taxonomy is compared to the existing textbook approach.