Optimal Monopoly Mechanisms with Demand Uncertainty
研究垄断企业在需求状态不确定时，如何设计匿名、确定性的直接揭示机制以最大化利润，并发现满足一定条件下最优机制是设定各需求状态下的垄断价格。
This paper analyzes a monopoly firm’s profit-maximizing mechanism in the following context. There is a continuum of consumers with a unit demand for a good. The distribution of the consumers’ valuations is given by one of two possible demand distributions/states. The consumers are uncertain about the demand state, and they update their beliefs after observing their own valuation for the good. The firm is uncertain about the demand state but infers it from the consumers’ reported valuations. The firm’s problem is to maximize profits by choosing an optimal mechanism among the class of anonymous, deterministic, direct revelation mechanisms that satisfy interim incentive compatibility and ex post individual rationality. We show that, under certain sufficient conditions, the firm’s optimal mechanism is to set the monopoly price in each demand state. Under these conditions, Segal’s optimal ex post mechanism is robust to relaxing ex post incentive compatibility to interim incentive compatibility.