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How Strong Buyers Spur Upstream Innovation

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Author Info
Roman Inderst
Christian Wey

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Abstract

We challenge the view that the presence of powerful buyers stiffles suppliers' incentives to innovate. Following Katz (1987), we model buyer power as buyers' ability to substitute away from a given supplier and isolate several effects that support the opposite view, namely that the presence of powerful buyers induces a supplier to invest more in cost reduction. In contrast to negotiations with smaller buyers, the outcome of negotiations with large buyers is fully determined by their more valuable alternative supply option. This increases the supplier.s incentives to reduce marginal costs, both as the supplier receives a larger fraction of the thereby generated incremental profits and as this makes buyers' alternative supply option less valuable. The latter effect is due to downstream competition between buyers and, as we show, is also stronger the larger and thus the more powerful buyers are.

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Paper provided by DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research in its series Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin with number 524.

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Length: 36 p.
Date of creation: 2005
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Publication status: Forthcoming in: Journal of the European Economic Association (2009)
Handle: RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp524

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Keywords: Buyer power; Merger; Investment incentives;

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  2. Shaked, Avner & Sutton, John, 1984. "Involuntary Unemployment as a Perfect Equilibrium in a Bargaining Model," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(6), pages 1351-64, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  6. Katz, Michael L, 1987. "The Welfare Effects of Third-Degree Price Discrimination in," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(1), pages 154-67, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  7. Suchan Chae & Paul Heidhues, 2004. "Buyers' Alliances for Bargaining Power," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 13(4), pages 731-754, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  8. Christopher M. Snyder, 1996. "A Dynamic Theory of Countervailing Power," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 27(4), pages 747-769, Winter. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  9. Bonnet, CéLine & Dubois, Pierre & Simioni, Michel, 2004. "Two-Part Tariffs versus Linear Pricing between Manufacturers and Retailers: Empirical Tests on Differentiated Products Markets," IDEI Working Papers 370, Institut d'Économie Industrielle (IDEI), Toulouse, revised Apr 2006. [Downloadable!]
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  10. Chen, Zhiqi, 2003. " Dominant Retailers and the Countervailing-Power Hypothesis," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 34(4), pages 612-25, Winter.
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  11. Haller, Hans & Holden, Steinar, 1990. "A letter to the editor on wage bargaining," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 52(1), pages 232-236, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  12. David De Meza & Ben Lockwood, 1998. "Does Asset Ownership Always Motivate Managers? Outside Options And The Property Rights Theory Of The Firm," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 113(2), pages 361-386, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  13. Qiu, Larry D., 1997. "On the Dynamic Efficiency of Bertrand and Cournot Equilibria," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 75(1), pages 213-229, July. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  14. Schmidt, Klaus M, 1997. "Managerial Incentives and Product Market Competition," Review of Economic Studies, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 64(2), pages 191-213, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  15. Zhiqi Chen, 2004. "Countervailing Power and Product Diversity," Econometric Society 2004 North American Winter Meetings 279, Econometric Society. [Downloadable!]
  16. Dobson, Paul W & Waterson, Michael, 1997. "Countervailing Power and Consumer Prices," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 107(441), pages 418-30, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  1. Venturini, Luciano, 2006. "Vertical competition between manufacturers and retailers and upstream incentives to innovate and differentiate," 98th Seminar, June 29-July 2, 2006, Chania, Crete, Greece 10050, European Association of Agricultural Economists. [Downloadable!]
  2. Pierpaolo Battigalli & Chiara Fumagalli & Michele Polo, 2006. "Buyer Power and Quality Improvement," Working Papers 310, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University. [Downloadable!]
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  3. Chiara Fumagalli & Massimo Motta, 2006. "Buyers’ miscoordination, entry, and downstream competition," CSEF Working Papers 152, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
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