Firms facing complex objectives often decompose the problems they face, delegating different parts of the decision to distinct subunits. Using comprehensive data and internal models from a large U.S. airline, we establish that airline pricing is not well approximated by a model of the firm as a unitary decision-maker. We show that observed prices, however, can be rationalized by accounting for organizational structure and for the decisions by departments that are tasked with supplying inputs to the observed pricing heuristic. Simulating the prices the firm would charge if it were a rational, unitary decision-maker results in lower welfare than we estimate under observed practices. Finally, we discuss why counterfactual estimates of welfare and market power may be biased if prices are set through decomposition, but we instead assume that they are set by unitary decision-makers.

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组织结构和定价：来自美国大型航空公司的证据

面临复杂目标的公司通常会分解他们面临的问题，将决策的不同部分委托给不同的子单位。使用美国一家大型航空公司的综合数据和内部模型，我们发现航空公司的定价并不能很好地用公司作为单一决策者的模型来近似。然而，我们表明，通过考虑组织结构和负责为观察到的定价启发式提供输入的部门的决策，可以使观察到的价格合理化。如果公司是一个理性的、单一的决策者，那么模拟公司会收取的价格会导致福利低于我们根据观察到的做法估计的福利。最后，我们讨论如果价格是通过分解设定的，为什么对福利和市场力量的反事实估计可能会出现偏差，