Perfect Price Discrimination: This is a good place to start the technical discussion of price discrimination because it establishes the benchmark of the most ‘successful’ type. The key concept to point out to students is that unlike the uniform price monopoly model from the previous chapter, in the case of perfect price discrimination the marginal revenue a firm earns is equal to the price it charges for the good. This is quite important and leads to the somewhat surprising result that a perfectly price discriminating monopolist produces and sells the same quantity that would exist under perfect competition. This means that the outcome is efficient, though with the firm earning the entire surplus instead of it going to consumers.

