IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/
MyIDEAS: Log in (now much improved!) to save this article

Vertical integration, raising rivals' costs and upstream collusion

Author Info

Listed author(s):
  • Normann, Hans-Theo

Abstract

This paper analyzes the impact vertical integration has on upstream collusion when the price of the input is linear. As a first step, the paper derives the collusive equilibrium that requires the lowest discount factor in the infinitely repeated game when one firm is vertically integrated. It turns out this is the joint-profit maximum of the colluding firms. The discount factor needed to sustain this equilibrium is then shown to be unambiguously lower than the one needed for collusion in the separated industry. While the previous literature has found it difficult to reconcile raising-rivals'-costs strategies following a vertical merger with equilibrium behavior in the static game, they are subgame perfect in the repeated game studied here.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.

File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014-2921(08)00085-8
Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.

Article provided by Elsevier in its journal European Economic Review.

Volume (Year): 53 (2009)
Issue (Month): 4 (May)
Pages: 461-480

as
in new window

Handle: RePEc:eee:eecrev:v:53:y:2009:i:4:p:461-480
Contact details of provider: Web page: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/eer

Keywords: Collusion Foreclosure Raising rivals' costs Vertical integration;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:
  • D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection
  • L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets
  • L23 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Organization of Production
  • L40 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies - - - General

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:

as
in new window


  1. Daniel P. O'Brien & Greg Shaffer, 1992. "Vertical Control with Bilateral Contracts," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 23(3), pages 299-308, Autumn.
  2. Deneckere, R., 1983. "Duopoly supergames with product differentiation," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 11(1-2), pages 37-42.
  3. Jean Tirole, 1988. "The Theory of Industrial Organization," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262200716, July.
  4. Volker Nocke & Lucy White, 2007. "Do Vertical Mergers Facilitate Upstream Collusion?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(4), pages 1321-1339, September.
  5. Ordover, Janusz A & Saloner, Garth & Salop, Steven C, 1992. "Equilibrium Vertical Foreclosure: Reply," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(3), pages 698-703, June.
  6. Chrysovalantou Milliou & Emmanuel Petrakis & Nikos Vettas, 2009. "(In)efficient Trading Forms in Competing Vertical Chains," Working Papers 0916, University of Crete, Department of Economics.
  7. Rey, Patrick & Tirole, Jean, 2007. "A Primer on Foreclosure," Handbook of Industrial Organization, Elsevier.
  8. Jeffrey Church & Neil Gandal, 2000. "Systems Competition, Vertical Merger, and Foreclosure," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 9(1), pages 25-51, 03.
  9. Hans-Theo Normann, 2004. "Equilibrium Vertical Foreclosure in the Repeated Game," Industrial Organization 0408008, EconWPA.
  10. Yongmin Chen & Michael H. Riordan, 2007. "Vertical integration, exclusive dealing, and expost cartelization," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 38(1), pages 1-21, 03.
  11. Abreu, Dilip, 1988. "On the Theory of Infinitely Repeated Games with Discounting," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(2), pages 383-396, March.
  12. Riordan, Michael H, 1998. "Anticompetitive Vertical Integration by a Dominant Firm," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(5), pages 1232-1248, December.
  13. Cooper, James C. & Froeb, Luke M. & O'Brien, Dan & Vita, Michael G., 2005. "Vertical antitrust policy as a problem of inference," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 23(7-8), pages 639-664, September.
  14. Compte, Olivier & Jenny, Frederic & Rey, Patrick, 2002. "Capacity constraints, mergers and collusion," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 1-29, January.
  15. B. Douglas Bernheim & Michael D. Whinston, 1990. "Multimarket Contact and Collusive Behavior," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 21(1), pages 1-26, Spring.
  16. Chen, Yongmin, 2001. "On Vertical Mergers and Their Competitive Effects," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 32(4), pages 667-685, Winter.
  17. Reiffen, David, 1992. "Equilibrium Vertical Foreclosure: Comment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(3), pages 694-697, June.
  18. Hart, O. & Tirole, J., 1990. "Vertical Integration And Market Foreclosure," Working papers 548, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Department of Economics.
  19. Patrick Bolton & Michael D. Whinston, 1993. "Incomplete Contracts, Vertical Integration, and Supply Assurance," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 60(1), pages 121-148.
  20. Martin, Stephen & Normann, Hans-Theo & Snyder, Christopher M, 2001. "Vertical Foreclosure in Experimental Markets," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 32(3), pages 466-496, Autumn.
  21. Roman Inderst & Tommaso M. Valletti, 2011. "Buyer Power And The ‘Waterbed Effect’," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(1), pages 1-20, 03.
  22. Jay Pil Choi & Sang-Seung Yi, 2000. "Vertical Foreclosure with the Choice of Input Specifications," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 31(4), pages 717-743, Winter.
  23. Yongmin Chen, 2005. "Vertical Disintegration," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 14(1), pages 209-229, 03.
  24. Bonanno, Giacomo & Vickers, John, 1988. "Vertical Separation," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(3), pages 257-265, March.
  25. Xavier Vives, 2001. "Oligopoly Pricing: Old Ideas and New Tools," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 026272040x, July.
  26. Ordover, Janusz A & Saloner, Garth & Salop, Steven C, 1990. "Equilibrium Vertical Foreclosure," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(1), pages 127-142, March.
  27. Michael A. Salinger, 1988. "Vertical Mergers and Market Foreclosure," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 103(2), pages 345-356.
  28. Roy Radner & Tatsuro Ichiishi, 1999. "A profit-center game with incomplete information," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 4(4), pages 307-343.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

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

as
in new window


Cited by:

  1. Avenel, Eric & Caprice, Stéphane, 2015. "Collusion et possibilité d’entrée en aval dans une industrie verticalement intégrée," TSE Working Papers 15-613, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
  2. Teichmann, Isabel & von Schlippenbach, Vanessa, 2015. "Collusive effects of a monopolist's use of an intermediary to deliver to retailers," Annual Conference 2015 (Muenster): Economic Development - Theory and Policy 112948, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
  3. Mariana Cunha & Paula Sarmento, 2014. "Does Vertical Integration Promote Downstream Incomplete Collusion? An Evaluation of Static and Dynamic Stability," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 14(1), pages 1-38, March.
  4. Sara Biancini & David Ettinger, 2016. "Vertical Integration and Downstream Collusion," Economics Working Paper Archive (University of Rennes 1 & University of Caen) 2016-09, Center for Research in Economics and Management (CREM), University of Rennes 1, University of Caen and CNRS.
  5. Qing, Qiankai & Deng, Tianhu & Wang, Hongwei, 2017. "Capacity allocation under downstream competition and bargaining," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 261(1), pages 97-107.
  6. Inderst, Roman & Valletti, Tommaso, 2011. "Incentives for input foreclosure," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(6), pages 820-831, August.
  7. Jiyun Cao & Arijit Mukherjee, 2014. "Market Power of the Input Supplier, Technology Transfer and Consumer Welfare," CESifo Working Paper Series 5093, CESifo Group Munich.
  8. Han, Aiping & Ge, Jianping & Lei, Yalin, 2016. "Vertical vs. horizontal integration: Game analysis for the rare earth industrial integration in China," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 149-159.
  9. Möllers, Claudia, 2016. "Reputation and foreclosure with vertical integration: Experimental evidence," DICE Discussion Papers 232, University of Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE).
  10. Jérôme Pouyet & Thomas Trégouët, 2016. "Vertical Mergers in Platform Markets," PSE Working Papers halshs-01410077, HAL.
  11. Joseph A. Clougherty & Tomaso Duso, 2010. "Using Rival Effects to Identify Synergies and Improve Merger Typologies," CIG Working Papers SP II 2010-13, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin (WZB), Research Unit: Competition and Innovation (CIG).
  12. Salvatore Piccolo & Markus Reisinger, 2011. "Exclusive Territories and Manufacturers' Collusion," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 57(7), pages 1250-1266, July.
  13. Isabel Teichmann & Vanessa von Schlippenbach, 2014. "Collusive Effects of a Monopolist's Use of an Intermediary to Deliver to Retailers," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1440, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
  14. Éric Avenel & Stéphane Caprice, 2012. "Collusion and downstream entry in a vertically integrated industry," Economics Working Paper Archive (University of Rennes 1 & University of Caen) 201208, Center for Research in Economics and Management (CREM), University of Rennes 1, University of Caen and CNRS.
  15. Traxler, Christian, 2012. "Majority voting and the welfare implications of tax avoidance," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(1), pages 1-9.
  16. Bian, Junsong & Lai, Kin Keung & Hua, Zhongsheng, 2013. "Upstream collusion and downstream managerial incentives," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 118(1), pages 97-100.

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Access and download statistics

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:eecrev:v:53:y:2009:i:4:p:461-480. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Dana Niculescu)

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 references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link 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 profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

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

This information is provided to you by IDEAS at the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis using RePEc data.