McQuown and Vasicek left Wells separately in the mid-1970s but teamed up in 1983 to apply options-pricing theory to live debt markets.

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As Mr Lott says, a chief strand of the game-theory account of predatory pricing relies on the idea that incumbent firms have an advantage over would-be entrants they know more, especially about their own costs, than newcomers do.

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In fact, he raised his rating on the shares this morning to Buy from Hold, in part on the theory that the company has pricing power that the Street might not appreciate.

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He patiently explains that economic theory tells us that discriminatory pricing by a monopolistic content provider, in which inelastic customers pay more than elastic ones, is provably more efficient than a one-size-fits-all pricing regime.

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Retail pricing is very much part of game theory and seeing this in the raw, rather than in simulated experiments, could be a very useful data set to mine to work out more about how such game theory applies in the real world.

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