学术报告 REPORT
    2018年6月1日—2018年6月2日
    地点:北京清华大学
    详细

    学术报告

    Price Discrimination with Fairness Constraints

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    【主讲】雷骁,哥伦比亚大学IEOR博士生

    【主题】定价歧视与公平性约束

    【时间】2021331日(周三)下午 12:00pm – 1:30pm

    【地点】清华经管学院 伟伦楼513

    【语言】英语

    【主办】管理科学与工程系



    SpeakerXiao Lei, Ph.D. student, IEOR Columbia University.

    TopicPrice Discrimination with Fairness Constraints

    TimeWednesday, March 31, 2021, 12:00pm – 1:30pm

    VenueWeilun 513

    LanguageEnglish

    OrganizerDepartment of Management Science and Engineering

    Abstract

    Discriminatory pricing -- offering different prices to different customers -- has become common practice. While it allows sellers to increase their profits, it also raises several concerns in terms of fairness. This topic has received extensive attention from media, industry, and regulatory agencies. In this paper, we consider the problem of setting prices for different groups under fairness constraints. We first propose four definitions: fairness in price, demand, consumer surplus, and no-purchase valuation. We then analyze the pricing strategy of a profit-maximizing seller and the impact of imposing fairness on the seller's profit, consumer surplus, and social welfare. Under linear or exponential demand, we show that imposing a small amount of fairness in price or no-purchase valuation increases social welfare, whereas fairness in demand or surplus reduces social welfare. We fully characterize the impact of imposing different types of fairness for linear demand. We also discover that imposing too much price fairness may result in a lower social welfare relative to imposing no price fairness. Finally, we computationally show that most of our findings continue to hold for three common nonlinear demand models. Our results and insights provide a first step in understanding the impact of imposing fairness in the context of discriminatory pricing.