Optimal Sales Schemes against Interdependent Buyers

Abstract

This paper studies a monopoly pricing problem when the seller can choose the timing of a trade with each buyer, and a buyer's valuation of the seller's good is the weighted sum of his and other buyers' private signals. We show that it is optimal for the seller to employ a sequential scheme that trades with one buyer at a time and allows each buyer to observe the outcomes of all preceding transactions. We also identify conditions under which the seller optimally trades with the buyers in the increasing order of the weights they place on other buyers' signals. (JEL D42, D82, L12)