Essays on Fair Division and Monopoly Pricing

[摘要] The first chapter is based on a paper with Jingyi Xue in fair division problems. In this chapter, we consider the problem of fairly dividing a finite number of divisible goods amongagents with the generalized Leontief preferences. We propose and characterize the classof generalized egalitarian rules which satisfy efficiency, group strategy-proofness, anonymity,resource monotonicity, population monotonicity, envy-freeness and consistency. On theLeontief domain, our rules generalize the egalitarian-equivalent rules with reference bundles. We also extend our rules to agent-specific and endowment-specific egalitarian rules. The former is a larger class of rules satisfying all the previous properties except anonymity andenvy-freeness. The latter is a class of efficient, group strategy-proof, anonymous and individually rational rules when the resources are assumed to be privately owned.The second chapter is about monopoly pricing with social learning. In this chapter, we consider a two-period monopolistic model in which the consumers who purchase in the firstperiod would reveal the unknown quality of the product through their experiences to the consumersin the second period. Due to this effect, some consumers would strategically chooseto delay to the second period in order to take this informational free-ride. We show that there always exists a unique symmetric equilibrium of consumers for each price set by themonopolist. Then we further investigate the seller’s optimization pricing problem. In a rangeof moderate patience, the seller would be likely to induce the consumers to effectively transmit information. We also discuss the impact of information disclosure on the monopolisticprofit.

[发布机构] Rice University

[效力级别] Division