Long-Term Contracting with Markovian Consumers
研究垄断者如何与偏好服从马尔可夫过程的消费者签订最优长期契约，发现契约非平稳但有简单状态变量，供给最终收敛到有效水平，且可防重新谈判。
To study how a firm can capitalize on a long-term customer relationship, we characterize the optimal contract between a monopolist and a consumer whose preferences follow a Markov process. The optimal contract is nonstationary and has infinite memory, but is described by a simple state variable. Under general conditions, supply converges to the efficient level for any degree of persistence of the types and along any history, though convergence is history-dependent. In contrast, as with constant types, the optimal contract can be renegotiation-proof, even with highly persistent types. These properties provide insights into the optimal ownership structure of the production technology.