Managing the expectations of buyers with reference-dependent preferences

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Hancart, Nathan
• 署名单位: University of Oslo
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0531
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2025.106134
• 发表日期: 2026
• 关键词: Loss aversion; price-discrimination; consumers; MODEL

摘要

I consider a model of monopoly pricing where a firm makes a price offer to a buyer with reference-dependent preferences without being able to commit to it. The reference point is the ex-ante probability of trade and the buyer exhibits an attachment effect: the higher his expectations to buy, the higher his willingness-to-pay. When the buyer's valuation is private information, a unique equilibrium exists where the firm plays a mixed strategy and its profits are the same as in the reference-independent benchmark. The equilibrium always entails inefficiencies: even as the firm's information converges to complete information, it mixes on a non-vanishing support and the probability of no trade is greater than zero. Finally, I show that when the firm can design a test about the buyer's valuation, it can do strictly better than in the reference-independent benchmark by leveraging the uncertainty generated by a noisy test.