Organizational Structure and Pricing: Evidence from a Large U.S. Airline
利用美国一家大型航空公司的数据和内部模型，研究发现其定价并非由统一决策者决定，而是通过组织结构分解实现，且这种分解定价带来的福利高于假设统一决策时的模拟结果。
Abstract Firms facing complex objectives often decompose the problems they face, delegating different parts of the decision to distinct subunits. Using comprehensive data and internal models from a large U.S. airline, we establish that airline pricing is not well approximated by a model of the firm as a unitary decision maker. We show that observed prices, however, can be rationalized by accounting for organizational structure and for the decisions by departments that are tasked with supplying inputs to the observed pricing heuristic. Simulating the prices the firm would charge if it were a rational, unitary decision maker results in lower welfare than we estimate under observed practices. Finally, we discuss why counterfactual estimates of welfare and market power may be biased if prices are set through decomposition, but we instead assume that they are set by unitary decision makers.