Non-linear pricing by convex duality

Date

2015

Authors

Pınar, M. Ç.

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Source Title

Automatica

Print ISSN

0005-1098

Electronic ISSN

1873-2836

Publisher

Elsevier

Volume

53

Issue

Pages

369 - 375

Language

English

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Abstract

We consider the pricing problem of a risk-neutral monopolist who produces (at a cost) and offers an infinitely divisible good to a single potential buyer that can be of a finite number of (single dimensional) types. The buyer has a non-linear utility function that is differentiable, strictly concave and strictly increasing. Using a simple reformulation and shortest path problem duality as in Vohra (2011) we transform the initial non-convex pricing problem of the monopolist into an equivalent optimization problem yielding a closed-form pricing formula under a regularity assumption on the probability distribution of buyer types. We examine the solution of the problem when the regularity condition is relaxed in different ways, or when the production function is non-linear and convex. For arbitrary type distributions, we offer a complete solution procedure.

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