Professor Einer Elhauge’s provocative article, Tying, Bundled Discounts, and the Death of the Single Monopoly Profit Theory, 123 Harv. L. Rev. 397 (2009), contests two propositions on which efficiency-minded antitrust scholars have largely agreed: (1) that there should be no tying liability absent substantial tied market foreclosure (a position contrary to the legal status quo), and (2) that co...

In many markets consumers incur search costs and firms choose a long-run pricing strategy that determines how they respond to market conditions. A pricing strategy may involve commitments to take actions that do not optimize short-term revenue given the information the firm learns about demand. For example, as already suggested in the literature, the firm could commit to a single price no matte...

This paper uses supermarket scanner data to estimate brand- and packaging-specific own- and cross-price elasticities for beer. We find that brand- and packaging-specific beer sales are highly price elastic. Cross-price elasticity estimates suggest that individuals are more likely to buy a higher-volume package of the same brand of beer than they are to switch brands. Policy simulations suggest ...

In the West, where posted prices are norm, it is uncommon to observe consumers receive discounts below price. Nevertheless, we find that when stores asked, a discount granted approximately 40% of time, with median percentage 10%. Discounts more likely be offered by small-scale firms, for higher-priced products, and nonsale items. More generally, differences in price delegation behavior across f...

Zone of tolerance has emerged as a key concept for guiding pricing decisions. It directs that user resistance to prices for new services or price increases to existing services will be minimized if they are within this zone, and that if discounts are to be effective in inducing additional use they should be of sufficient magnitude to be outside this zone. External reference prices can be used t...

Affordable patient access to medicines, particularly to new premium-priced medicines, is an issue, even in high-income countries. The pharmaceutical industry has argued in favour of price discrimination amongst countries based on confidential discounts as a solution to ensuring affordability and availability in less-resourced countries. In this editorial, we explain why we disagree, and we elab...

In an electronic marketplace coalition formation allows buyers to enjoy a price discount for each item while combinatorial auction enables buyers to place bids for a bundle of items that are complementary. Coalition formation and combinatorial auction both help to improve the e ciency of a market and have received much attention from economists and computer scientists. But neither in laboratori...

In an electronic marketplace coalition formation allows buyers to enjoy a price discount for each item while combinatorial auction enables buyers to place bids for a bundle of items that are complementary. Coalition formation and combinatorial auction both help to improve the e ciency of a market and have received much attention from economists and computer scientists. But neither in laboratori...