管理科学系学术讲座（9月18日）

时   间：2025年9月18日（周四） 10:30-12:00

地   点：管理学院思源楼524室

主   题：Multilateral Network Pricing Under Asymmetric Network Information

主讲人：Yang Zhang（张阳） 肯特大学商学院副教授

主持人：肖诗虹 复旦大学管理学院副教授

Abstract：

We study multilateral pricing on networks with strategic customers and local consumption externality. The firm cannot observe the number of connections (i.e. degree) that a customer holds in private, and therefore has to price upon global network information. In multilateral pricing, the firm is able to charge a price based on the joint activities of neighbors (analogous to a referral program). In contrast, bilateral pricing is the base case where the payment is solely determined by the activity of one's own. Under multilateral pricing, we demonstrate that the optimal payment exhibits quantity discount, and decouples the action of focal customer and that of referred customer. While we allow for general nonlinear pricing, the induced consumption at optimality reduces to a linear function in the customer's degree. The firm's resulting profit becomes distribution-free, i.e. fully captured by (and increasing with) the expectation and the variance of customer degrees in the network, but independent of the degree distributions of customers and their neighbors. The multilateral pricing scheme we considered extracts full surplus of customers and achieves the first-best outcome. We further characterize the performance gaps in consumption and profit between multilateral and bilateral pricing, and how they change with the strength of network externality.

Bio: Dr. Yang Zhang is an Associate Professor in Business Analytics at Kent Business School, University of Kent, United Kingdom. Yang's study falls into the realms of network economics and behavioural operations management. His works have appeared on flagship/top journals including Operations Research, Production and Operations Management, and Journal of Operations Management. Yang has principally investigated, co-principally investigated and co-investigated projects funded by British Council (UK), National Natural Science Foundation of China (with performance rating A+ 项目后评估:特优), National Science Foundation (United States), Beijing Natural Science Foundation, and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canada) via Institutional Grant. Yang received a dual-title PhD degree in Business Administration & Operations Research from The Pennsylvania State University (US). He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA) in UK.