Multidimensional Screening - Basov, Suren

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Résumé :
In many industries the tariffs are not strictly proportional to the quantity purchased, i. e, they are nonlinear. Examples of nonlinear tariffs include railroad and electricity schedules and rental rates for durable goods and space. The major justification for the nonlinear pricing is the existence of private information on the side of consumers. In the early papers on the subject, private information was captured either by assuming a finite number of types (e. g. Adams and Yellen, 1976) or by a unidimensional continuum of types (Mussa and Rosen, 1978). Economics of the unidimen? sional problems is by now well understood. The unidimensional models, however, do not cover all the situations of practical interest. Indeed, often the nonlinear tariffs specify the payment as a function of a variety of characteristics. For example, railroad tariffs spec? ify charges based on weight, volume, and distance of each shipment. Dif? ferent customers may value each of these characteristics differently, hence the customer's type will not in general be captured by a unidimensional characteristic and a problem of multidimensional screening arises. In such models the consumer's private information (her type) is captured by an m?dimensional vector, while the good produced by the monopolist has n quality dimensions.

Biographie:
Suren Basov is a visitor to the Centre for Economics and Financial Econometrics at Deakin University, Australia. His research interests lie in the areas of mechanism design, with a particular emphasis on multidimensional screening models, the theory of bounded rationality, and evolutionary game theory. He also does research in the areas of directed search and unemployment, and incentive provision within clubs, with a particular application to Islamic finance....

Sommaire:
Mathematical Preliminaries.- Vector Calculus.- Partial Differential Equations.- Theory of Generalized Convexity.- Calculus of Variations and the Optimal Control.- Miscellaneous Techniques.- Economics of Multidimensional Screening.- The Unidimensional Screening Model.- The Multidimensional Screening Model.- Beyond the Quasilinear Case.- Existence, Uniqueness, and Continuity of the Solution.- Conclusions.- References.