طراحی اطلاعات و تبعیض قیمتی در بازار خودروی ایران: شواهدی از تحلیل سود–رفاه

Purpose: The car industry in Iran is among the most strategic sectors of the economy, contributing close to 10 percent of GDP and employing over 400,000 people directly. Despite its importance, the market has long been characterized by heavy government intervention, price distortions, and structural inefficiencies. Traditional tools such as subsidies and price ceilings have failed to address equity concerns or improve efficiency in a sustainable way. This study aims to examine whether information design and redistributive price discrimination can provide a more effective policy framework, balancing profitability for firms with social welfare gains for consumers, particularly low-income households.

Methodology: The analysis follows a step-by-step approach. First, Monte Carlo simulations were used to explore how consumers respond under several pricing scenarios. These scenarios include: the baseline without intervention; a two-tier equity-oriented pricing scheme; a three-tier scheme; an anti-resale policy combined with price caps; and macroeconomic shocks of ±20 percent. The simulations allow us to generate comparable measures of welfare, profits, and coverage of low-income groups under each policy design.

Second, Logit and Nested Logit demand models were estimated to capture substitution between categories such as economic, family, and luxury cars. These models allow a richer representation of heterogeneous consumer preferences. Price endogeneity was addressed through IV-GMM estimation, with instruments constructed from cost-side variables. Third, the analysis was extended through calibration and optimization methods. Market data corresponding to the base year 2023/24, including factory and market prices as well as production capacities, were used to calibrate the models.

Network optimization was then applied to identify configurations of prices and allocations that maximize welfare subject to profitability constraints. Finally, structural estimation of demand was employed to validate the results. This approach incorporates actual data more directly, producing estimates that are less dependent on simulation assumptions and more closely tied to observed consumer behavior.

Findings and Discussion: Simulation results provide the baseline for comparison. Welfare in the absence of intervention is measured at 1140 units, with only 21 percent of low-income households able to purchase a car. Introducing two-tier pricing raises welfare to 1296 units (+13.7%) and increases coverage to 45 percent, while profits fall by about 5 percent relative to baseline. Three-tier pricing further improves outcomes, with welfare reaching 1344 units (+17.9%) and coverage of 51 percent. The anti-resale plus price-cap policy performs best in the simulation framework, with welfare increasing to 1440 units (+26.3%) and coverage rising to 57 percent, while profit levels remain close to baseline.

The Logit and Nested Logit models largely confirm these results, though magnitudes differ slightly. Baseline profit is estimated at 1.1. Welfare under three-tier pricing is 1400 units, with coverage at 54 percent. Under anti-resale with price caps, welfare reaches 1500 units and coverage expands to 60 percent. Positive macroeconomic shocks increase profits to 1.05 but reduce welfare to 1080 and coverage to 18 percent, while negative shocks reduce profits but increase coverage to 36 percent.

Calibration and optimization strengthen these findings. Welfare under three-tier pricing rises to 1456 units (+22.8%), with coverage at 56 percent. The anti-resale plus price-cap policy achieves even greater gains, with welfare reaching 1560 units (+36.8%) and coverage expanding to 62 percent. Importantly, profits remain close to the baseline level, showing that welfare gains can be achieved without large sacrifices by producers.

Structural estimation provides the most robust evidence. In this framework, baseline welfare is measured at 1282 units. Two-tier pricing increases welfare to 1458 (+27.3%) with coverage of 52 percent. Three-tier pricing results in welfare of 1512 (+32.6%) and coverage of 59 percent. The anti-resale plus price-cap policy produces the strongest results, raising welfare to 1620 units (+42.1%) and coverage to 66 percent. Positive macroeconomic shocks again highlight the vulnerability of poor households: profits rise to 1.10, but welfare falls to 1215 and coverage stagnates at 21 percent.

Across all methods, the results consistently show that redistributive price discrimination combined with information design can improve access for low-income households and raise social welfare. The anti-resale and price-cap strategy delivers the largest and most consistent welfare gains. Even when macroeconomic shocks are considered, segmentation policies mitigate the negative effects on poorer groups, though not completely.

These findings emphasize two main points. First, segmentation allows policies to better reflect consumer heterogeneity, enabling designs that both improve equity and maintain profitability. Second, enforcement mechanisms such as anti-resale rules are critical to prevent arbitrage and speculation, which would otherwise erode the intended redistributive impact.

Conclusions and Policy Implications: The study concludes that carefully designed redistributive pricing can reconcile social objectives with industry profitability in Iran’s car market. In particular, policies that combine tiered pricing with anti-resale measures and moderate price caps generate welfare gains of 26–42 percent relative to baseline and expand coverage for low-income households from 21 percent to as much as 66 percent.

For policymakers, the results suggest that reliance on traditional subsidies and generalized price controls is inefficient and inequitable. Instead, embedding equity-oriented segmentation within a transparent regulatory framework provides a more sustainable approach. At the same time, caution is needed: the welfare units presented are normalized measures, not direct monetary values, and the estimates depend on available data. Further research with transaction-level datasets is necessary to refine these results.

Nevertheless, the consistency of findings across simulation, discrete choice models, calibration, and structural estimation provides strong evidence that redistributive price discrimination through information design can meaningfully enhance welfare while keeping producers’ incentives largely intact.