Hi, I have now had opportunity to go through your mail thoroughly, and I would just like to say thank you. I'm trying to flesh out an idea for a further function bulk discounts may serve in illegal markets, and I really appreciate your help. Your mail was most useful.
Ole At 21:37 08.07.2002 +0100, you wrote: > > The industrial organization textbook by Carlton and Perloff is good on > > issues of price discrimination, quantity discounts etc. > > > > Alex > > >Sadly, I find Advanced Industrial Economics, by Stephen Martin (Blackwell >1993) a much better book in many ways. Although Carlton is a hugely >talented economist (also hugely successful consultant; he recently endowed a >chair at MIT), Carlton and Perloff is a talk-talk book. Too much "it can be >shown that" with a citation, rather than actually showing, plus lots of >summaries. Useful, but not a very good text. Martin is much better at >showing how the models actually work. Lest I find myself in the middle of >an antitrust dispute, I will happily stipulate for the libertarians on the >list that Martin's antitrust views seem to assume that the government is >different from everyone else by being benevolent and all-wise. His text is >still better than Carlton and Perloff. > >The literature on bundling is huge. One place to start is by looking at >John Lott and Russell Roberts, "A Guide to the Pitfalls of Identifying Price >Discrimination" Economic Inquiry (January 1991) 29, 14-23, an important >critique of empirical work on price discrimination. They point to the >difficulties of separating cost explanations from price discrimination >explanations. Since then, empirical papers have to confront the >Lott-Roberts critique, so a citation search on Lott and Roberts is a good >way to begin. > >Because the literature is so large, it is worth asking what sort of >applications you are looking for. For example, Carl Shapiro and Hal >Varian's Information Rules (the book's website is www.inforules.com) has a >lot of interesting non-technical material on bundling in information goods. >The references (mostly in the website, not the book) go back to the >technical material. > >Bill Sjostrom > > >+++++++++++++ >William Sjostrom >Senior Lecturer >Department of Economics >National University of Ireland, Cork >Cork, Ireland > >+353-21-490-2091 (work) >+353-21-427-3920 (fax) >+353-21-463-4056 (home) >[EMAIL PROTECTED] >[EMAIL PROTECTED] >www.ucc.ie/~sjostrom/
