Suchergebnisse

This article investigates downstream firms' ability to collude in a repeated game of competition between supply chains. We show that downstream firms with buyer power can collude more easily in the output market if they also collude on their input supply contracts. More specifically, an implicit agreement on input supply contracts with above‐cost wholesale prices and negative fixed fees (that is, slotting fees) facilitates collusion on downstream prices. Banning information exchange about wholesale prices decreases the scope for collusion. Moreover, high downstream prices are more difficult to sustain if upstream rather than downstream firms make contract offers.

AbstractA buyer can either buy a good at a local monopolist or search for it in the market. The more intensely the buyer searches, the more likely he will find the good in the market; if his search fails, he can still buy it from the local monopolist. We show that a buyer with a higher willingness to pay searches (weakly) more intensely. This skews the distribution of types buying at the local monopolist toward lower valuations and exerts pressure on the local monopolist to reduce his price. Despite this effect, offering the monopoly price remains weakly optimal in equilibrium.