Spatial price discrimination in a mixed duopoly input market

Abstract

We uniquely examine an upstream mixed duopoly engaging in spatial price discrimination across a continuum of downstream markets. The monopoly firms in those markets face elastic final demand creating double marginalization. The upstream public firm faces a cost disadvantage relative to its private rival that declines as it is partially privatized. We show that the fully public firm improves social welfare relative to a private duopoly when it is not overly inefficient and when differentiation is sufficiently large. We also show that whenever this is the case, there exists an optimal degree of partial privatization that better aligns the trade-off between production costs and pricing distortions.