Nonlinear Pricing with Network Externalities

This paper considers the screening problem faced by a monopolist of a network good in a general setting. We fully characterize the optimal contracts in the joint presence of network externalities and asymmetric information about agents' types. We find that the pattern of consumption distortion crucially depends on the degree of network congestability. It is shown that an optimal consumption scheme exhibits a two-way distortion, no distortion on the top, or one-way distortion if and only if network is congestible, neutral-congestible or discongestible.