Abstract
Economic space has long been the subject of back yard economics, the reason for this being that economic distance was thought only to complicate the argument. However, the introduction of a distance variable does not necessarily imply complicated theory. Moreover, theoretical impacts and implications of the assumption of economic space are by no means unimportant nor can they be ignored. It is in light of this belief that the dissertation endeavors to answer the question whether the firm in economic space behaves similarly as does the classical nonspatial firm. Specifically, the dissertation investigates the impacts of economic space on the pricing practices and outputs of the firm. It has been observed that there exist two alternative pricing practices for the firm to choose: discriminatory and nondiscriminatory pricing. In classical nonspatial theory, the selection of the one or the other price policy depended in part on the existence (or nonexistence) of competition in the market. But even given the market type, viz. given monopoly, the question of price policy was not immediately resolved. Price discrimination might or might not prevail under conditions of nonspatial monopoly, and was not even considered for competitive markets. In contrast, price discrimination can be expected under monopoly and will often prevail under conditions of competition in economic space. ...
Ohta, Hiroshi (1971). Aspects of spatial pricing. Doctoral dissertation, Texas A&M University. Texas A&M University. Libraries. Available electronically from
https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /DISSERTATIONS -172574.