IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/jku/econwp/2020-06.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Manufacturer Cartels and Resale Price Maintenance

Author

Listed:
  • Matthias Hunold
  • Johannes Muthers

Abstract

We provide a theory of how RPM facilitate upstream cartels absent any information asymmetries using a model with manufacturer and retailer competition. Because retailers have an effective outside option to each manufacturer’s contract, the manufacturers can only ensure contract acceptance by leaving a sufficient margin to the retailers. This restricts the wholesale price level even when manufacturers collude. In this context, resale price maintenance may only be profitable for the manufacturers if they collude. We thus provide a novel theory of harm for resale price maintenance when manufacturers collude and illustrate the fit of this theory in various competition policy cases.

Suggested Citation

  • Matthias Hunold & Johannes Muthers, 2020. "Manufacturer Cartels and Resale Price Maintenance," Economics working papers 2020-06, Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.
  • Handle: RePEc:jku:econwp:2020-06
    Note: English
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.econ.jku.at/papers/2020/wp2006.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. G.F. Mathewson & R.A. Winter, 1984. "An Economic Theory of Vertical Restraints," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 15(1), pages 27-38, Spring.
    2. Dennis Rickert, 2019. "Upstream Collusion and Resale Price Maintenance: An Anatomy of the German Coffee Cartel," Post-Print hal-02454192, HAL.
    3. Matthias Hunold & Johannes Muthers, 2017. "Resale price maintenance and manufacturer competition for retail services," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 48(1), pages 3-23, March.
    4. Tommy Staahl Gabrielsen & Bjørn Olav Johansen, 2017. "Resale Price Maintenance with Secret Contracts and Retail Service Externalities," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 9(1), pages 63-87, February.
    5. Dobson, Paul W. & Waterson, Michael, 2007. "The competition effects of industry-wide vertical price fixing in bilateral oligopoly," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 25(5), pages 935-962, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Dertwinkel-Kalt, Markus & Wey, Christian, 2023. "Resale price maintenance in a successive monopoly model," DICE Discussion Papers 395, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE).
    2. Dertwinkel-Kalt, Markus & Wey, Christian, 2021. "Multi-Product Pricing and Minimum Resale Price Maintenance," VfS Annual Conference 2021 (Virtual Conference): Climate Economics 242338, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dertwinkel-Kalt, Markus & Wey, Christian, 2021. "Multi-Product Pricing and Minimum Resale Price Maintenance," VfS Annual Conference 2021 (Virtual Conference): Climate Economics 242338, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    2. Maruyama, Masayoshi & Zennyo, Yusuke, 2020. "Platform most-favored-customer clauses and investment incentives," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    3. Dertwinkel-Kalt, Markus & Wey, Christian, 2023. "Resale price maintenance in a successive monopoly model," DICE Discussion Papers 395, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE).
    4. Matthias Hunold & Johannes Muthers, 2023. "Manufacturer Collusion and Resale Price Maintenance," Volkswirtschaftliche Diskussionsbeiträge 197-23, Universität Siegen, Fakultät Wirtschaftswissenschaften, Wirtschaftsinformatik und Wirtschaftsrecht.
    5. Teis Lunde Lømo & Simen A. Ulsaker, 2021. "Lump‐Sum Payments and Retail Services: A Relational Contracting Perspective," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 69(1), pages 131-168, March.
    6. Hunold, Matthias, 2020. "Manufacturer Cartels and Resale Price Maintenance," VfS Annual Conference 2020 (Virtual Conference): Gender Economics 224645, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    7. Babur De los Santos & Matthijs R. Wildenbeest, 2017. "E-book pricing and vertical restraints," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 15(2), pages 85-122, June.
    8. Ingene, Charles A. & Parry, Mark E. & Xu, Zibin, 2020. "Resale Price Maintenance: Customer Service Without Free Riding," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 96(4), pages 563-577.
    9. Holler, Emanuel & Rickert, Dennis, 2022. "How resale price maintenance and loss leading affect upstream cartel stability: Anatomy of a coffee cartel," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    10. Tommy Staahl Gabrielsen & Bjørn Olav Johansen, 2017. "Resale Price Maintenance with Secret Contracts and Retail Service Externalities," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 9(1), pages 63-87, February.
    11. Foros, Øystein & Kind, Hans Jarle & Shaffer, Greg, 2015. "Apple's Agency Model and the Role of Resale Price Maintenance," Discussion Papers 2015/32, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Business and Management Science.
    12. Markus Dertwinkel‐Kalt & Mats Köster, 2022. "Attention to online sales: The role of brand image concerns," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(1), pages 64-89, February.
    13. Matthias Hunold & Johannes Muthers, 2017. "Resale price maintenance and manufacturer competition for retail services," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 48(1), pages 3-23, March.
    14. Oystein Foros & Hans Jarle Kind & Greg Shaffer, 2013. "Turning the Page on Business Formats for Digital Platforms: Does Apple's Agency Model Soften Competition?," CESifo Working Paper Series 4362, CESifo.
    15. Helfrich, Magdalena & Herweg, Fabian, 2020. "Context-dependent preferences and retailing: Vertical restraints on internet sales," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    16. Liang Lu, 2017. "A Comparison of the Wholesale Model and the Agency Model in Differentiated Markets," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 51(2), pages 151-172, September.
    17. Herweg, Fabian & Helfrich, Magdalena, 2017. "Salience in Retailing: Vertical Restraints on Internet Sales," CEPR Discussion Papers 11948, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    18. Foros, Øystein & Kind, Hans Jarle & Shaffer, Greg, 2011. "Resale price maintenance and restrictions on dominant firm and industry-wide adoption," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 179-186, March.
    19. Lømo, Teis Lunde, 2015. "Risk sharing mitigates opportunism in vertical contracting," Working Papers in Economics 10/15, University of Bergen, Department of Economics.
    20. Staahl Gabrielsen, Tommy & Johansen, Bjørn Olav & Shaffer, Greg, 2018. "When is Double Marginalization a Problem?," Working Papers in Economics 7/18, University of Bergen, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    resale price maintenance; collusion; retailing.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L41 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies - - - Monopolization; Horizontal Anticompetitive Practices
    • L42 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies - - - Vertical Restraints; Resale Price Maintenance; Quantity Discounts
    • L81 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Retail and Wholesale Trade; e-Commerce

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:jku:econwp:2020-06. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: René Böheim (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vlinzat.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.