Brand Names and Price Discrimination

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This paper explains the fact that firms market both labeled and unlabeled products as a practice of price discrimination that emerges as a noncooperative equilibrium outcome. We consider a market for a differentiated product where the possibility to price discriminate by the selective use of labels is due to the fact that buyers differ in the intensity of their preferences and that, before they buy, they are unable to distinguish among the different brands without the aid of identifying labels.