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Upstream Competition and Downstream Buyer Power

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  • Howard Smith
  • John Thanassoulis

Abstract

It is often claimed that large buyers wield buyer power.� Existing theories of this effect generally assume upstream monopoly.� Yet the evidence is strongest with upstream competition.� We show that upstream competition can yield buyer power for large buyers by generating supplier-level volume uncertainty - a feature that emerges from case study evidence of upstream competition - so the negotiated price depends on the seller's cost expectation.� By analyzing the effect of market structure changes on seller cost expectations the paper gives insights on three key policy-relevant questions around buyer power: (i) who wields it and under what circumstances (ii) does a downstream merger alter the buyer power of other buyers (so-called waterbed effects); and (iii) how are the incentives to invest in upstream technology altered by the creation of large downstream firms?

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by University of Oxford, Department of Economics in its series Economics Series Working Papers with number 420.

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Date of creation: 01 Jan 2009
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Handle: RePEc:oxf:wpaper:420

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Keywords: Buyer power; Waterbed effects; Bargaining in the supply chain; Milk; Private-Label; Supermarkets;

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  3. Roman Inderst & Christian Wey, 2003. "Buyer Power and Supplier Incentives," CIG Working Papers SP II 2003-05, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin (WZB), Research Unit: Competition and Innovation (CIG).
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  8. Catherine C. de Fontenay & Joshua S. Gans, 2005. "Vertical Integration in the Presence of Upstream Competition," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 36(3), pages 544-572, Autumn.
  9. Stole, Lars A & Zwiebel, Jeffrey, 1996. "Organizational Design and Technology Choice under Intrafirm Bargaining," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(1), pages 195-222, March.
  10. Tasneem Chipty & Christopher M. Snyder, 1999. "The Role Of Firm Size In Bilateral Bargaining: A Study Of The Cable Television Industry," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 81(2), pages 326-340, May.
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  16. Victor P. Goldberg, 1977. "Competitive Bidding and the Production of Precontract Information," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 8(1), pages 250-261, Spring.
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Citations

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Cited by:
  1. Reisinger, Markus & Schnitzer, Monika, 2008. "A Model of Vertical Oligopolistic Competition," CEPR Discussion Papers 6730, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  2. Allain, Marie-Laure & Henry, Emeric & Kyle, Margaret K, 2011. "Inefficiencies in technology transfer: theory and empirics," CEPR Discussion Papers 8206, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  3. Marie-Laure Allain & Emeric Henry & Margaret Kyle, 2011. "Inefficiencies in the sale of ideas: theory and empirics," Working Papers hal-00639128, HAL.
  4. Chambolle, Claire & Villas-Boas, Sofia B, 2007. "Buyer power through producer's differentiation," CUDARE Working Paper Series 1042, University of California at Berkeley, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Policy.
  5. Walter Beckert, 2011. "Empirical Analysis of Countervailing Power in Business-to-Business Bargaining," Birkbeck Working Papers in Economics and Finance 1107, Birkbeck, Department of Economics, Mathematics & Statistics.
  6. 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.
  7. Symeonidis, George, 2010. "Downstream merger and welfare in a bilateral oligopoly," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 230-243, May.
  8. Walter Beckert, 2011. "Empirical analysis of countervailing power in business-to-business bargaining," CeMMAP working papers CWP32/11, Centre for Microdata Methods and Practice, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
  9. Walter Beckert, 2009. "Empirical analysis of buyer power," CeMMAP working papers CWP17/09, Centre for Microdata Methods and Practice, Institute for Fiscal Studies.

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