American Economic Journal: Microeconomics · 2026 · Yanlin Chen、Xianwen Shi、Jun Zhang
中文摘要
本文研究在同时存在锁定消费者与可争夺消费者的双寡头市场中价格歧视的福利效应。我们采用统一的信息设计方法，刻画了分别使生产者剩余、消费者剩余与社会剩余达到最优与最劣的市场分割。企业最优分割将市场划分为两个嵌套细分市场，相对于统一定价，它一致地降低了消费者福利。消费者最优分割将市场划分为一个对称细分市场和一个嵌套细分市场，有时可能带来帕累托改进，但并不必然与社会最优分割相一致。(JEL D43, D83)
Abstract
We study the welfare effects of price discrimination in a duopoly with both captive and contested consumers. Using a unified information design approach, we characterize the best and worst market segmentations for producer surplus, consumer surplus, and social surplus. The firm-optimal segmentation, which divides the market into two nested segments, consistently reduces consumer welfare relative to uniform pricing. The consumer-optimal segmentation, which divides the market into a symmetric segment and a nested segment, may sometimes yield a Pareto improvement but does not necessarily coincide with the social-optimal segmentation. (JEL D43, D83)