IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ivi/wpasad/2001-28.html

Divisionalization In Vertical Structures

Author

Listed:
  • Ramón Faulí-Oller

    (Universidad de Alicante)

  • Lluís Bru

    (Universitat de les Illes Balears)

  • José Manuel Ordóñez de Haro

    (Universidad de Málaga)

Abstract

We study the incentives to create divisions by a firm once it is taken into account the vertical structures of an industry. Downstream firms, that must buy an essential input to upstream firms, may create divisions. Divisionalization reduces their bargaining power against upstream firms. This effect must be weighted against the usual incentive to divisionalize, namely the increase in the share of the final market that a firm obtains through it. We show that incentives to divisonalize are severely reduced when compared with the standard results, and that even sometimes firms choose not to divisionalize at all. The paper also shows the implications of the former analysis on the internal organization of firms and on the incentives to vertically integrate.

Suggested Citation

  • Ramón Faulí-Oller & Lluís Bru & José Manuel Ordóñez de Haro, 2001. "Divisionalization In Vertical Structures," Working Papers. Serie AD 2001-28, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).
    • Handle: RePEc:ivi:wpasad:2001-28
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.ivie.es/downloads/docs/wpasad/wpasad-2001-28.pdf
    File Function: Fisrt version / Primera version, 2001
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Miguel González‐Maestre, 2000. "Divisionalization and Delegation in Oligopoly," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 9(3), pages 321-338, June.
    2. Oliver Hart & Jean Tirole, 1990. "Vertical Integration and Market Foreclosure," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 21(1990 Micr), pages 205-286.
    3. Symeonidis, George, 2010. "Downstream merger and welfare in a bilateral oligopoly," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 230-243, May.
    4. Antonio Tesoriere, 2021. "Drastic innovation reduces firms’ incentives to create divisions," Economia Politica: Journal of Analytical and Institutional Economics, Springer;Fondazione Edison, vol. 38(3), pages 971-994, October.
    5. Ramon Fauli-Oller & Joel Sandonis, 2016. "Welfare Effects Of Downstream Mergers And Upstream Market Concentration," The Singapore Economic Review (SER), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 61(05), pages 1-16, December.
    6. Huck, Steffen & Konrad, Kai A. & Muller, Wieland, 2001. "Divisionalization in contests," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 70(1), pages 89-93, January.
    7. Kjell Erik Lommerud & Odd Rune Straume & Lars Sorgard, 2006. "National Versus International Mergers in Unionized Oligopoly," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 37(1), pages 212-233, Spring.
    8. Chemla, Gilles, 2000. "Downstream Competition, Foreclosure, and Vertical Integration," CEPR Discussion Papers 2647, Centre for Economic Policy Research.
    9. Kjell Erik Lommerud & Odd Rune Straume & Lars Sørgard, 2006. "National versus international mergers in unionized oligopoly," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 37(1), pages 212-233, March.
    10. Chemla, G., 1999. "Downstream Competition, Foreclosure, and Vertical Integration," Papers 99-18, Paris X - Nanterre, U.F.R. de Sc. Ec. Gest. Maths Infor..
    11. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:12:y:2008:i:3:p:1-7 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Can Erutku & Yves Richelle, 2007. "Optimal Licensing Contracts and the Value of a Patent," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 16(2), pages 407-436, June.
    13. Ramon Fauli-Oller & Lluis Bru, 2008. "Horizontal mergers for buyer power," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 12(3), pages 1-7.
    14. Dobson, Paul W & Waterson, Michael, 1997. "Countervailing Power and Consumer Prices," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 107(441), pages 418-430, March.
    15. Stéphane Caprice, 2005. "Incentive to encourage downstream competition under bilateral oligopoly [[Incitation d'une firme amont à favoriser la concurrence en aval dans le cadre d'un oligopole bilatéral]]," Post-Print hal-02676111, HAL.
    16. Tomomichi Mizuno, 2009. "Divisionalization And Horizontal Mergers In A Vertical Relationship," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 77(3), pages 317-336, June.
    17. Stephane Caprice, 2005. "Incentive to encourage downstream competition under bilateral oligopoly," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 12(9), pages 1-5.
    18. McAfee, R Preston & Schwartz, Marius, 1994. "Opportunism in Multilateral Vertical Contracting: Nondiscrimination, Exclusivity, and Uniformity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(1), pages 210-230, March.
    19. Zafeira Kastrinaki & Paul Stoneman, 2011. "Merger Patterns in the European Food Supply Chain," International Journal of the Economics of Business, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(3), pages 463-487, November.
    20. Inderst, Roman & Wey, Christian, 2003. "Bargaining, Mergers, and Technology Choice in Bilaterally Oligopolistic Industries," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 34(1), pages 1-19, Spring.
    21. Corts, Kenneth S. & Neher, Darwin V., 2003. "Credible delegation," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 47(3), pages 395-407, June.
    22. Ziss, Steffen, 1998. "Divisionalization and product differentiation," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 59(1), pages 133-138, April.
    23. Lasheng Yuan, 1999. "Product Differentiation, Strategic Divisionalization, and Persistence of Monopoly," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 8(4), pages 581-602, December.
    24. Richard J. Sexton, 2000. "Industrialization and Consolidation in the U.S. Food Sector: Implications for Competition and Welfare," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 82(5), pages 1087-1104.
    25. Baye, Michael R & Crocker, Keith J & Ju, Jiandong, 1996. "Divisionalization, Franchising, and Divestiture Incentives in Oligopoly," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(1), pages 223-236, March.
    26. Corchon, Luis C. & Gonzalez-Maestre, Miguel, 2000. "On the competitive effects of divisionalization," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 71-79, January.
    27. Corchon, Luis C., 1991. "Oligopolistic competition among groups," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 1-3, May.
    28. Richard J. Sexton, 2013. "Market Power, Misconceptions, and Modern Agricultural Markets," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 95(2), pages 209-219.
    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. Tomomichi Mizuno, 2009. "Divisionalization And Horizontal Mergers In A Vertical Relationship," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 77(3), pages 317-336, June.
    2. Joao Carlos Correia Leitao, 2004. "Optimal Divisionalization for Selling Networks of Cable Television Services," Industrial Organization 0403004, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    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. Ramon Fauli-Oller & Joel Sandonis, 2016. "Welfare Effects Of Downstream Mergers And Upstream Market Concentration," The Singapore Economic Review (SER), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 61(05), pages 1-16, December.
    2. Joel Sandonís & Javier M. López-Cuñat, 2018. "Upstream Incentives To Encourage Downstream Competition In A Vertically Separated Industry," The Singapore Economic Review (SER), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 63(03), pages 619-627, June.
    3. Symeonidis, George, 2010. "Downstream merger and welfare in a bilateral oligopoly," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 230-243, May.
    4. Ioannis N. Pinopoulos, 2020. "Upstream horizontal mergers involving a vertically integrated firm," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 130(1), pages 67-83, June.
    5. Ioannis N. Pinopoulos, 2017. "Upstream horizontal mergers and vertical integration," Discussion Paper Series 2017_07, Department of Economics, University of Macedonia, revised Aug 2017.
    6. Yan Yan & Yi Li, 2026. "Partial Passive Ownership Holdings and Divisionalization," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 68(1), pages 55-69, January.
    7. Chrysovalantou Milliou & Apostolis Pavlou, 2009. "Upstream Horizontal Mergers and Efficiency Gains," CESifo Working Paper Series 2748, CESifo.
    8. Milliou, Chrysovalantou & Petrakis, Emmanuel, 2007. "Upstream horizontal mergers, vertical contracts, and bargaining," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 25(5), pages 963-987, October.
    9. Ramón Faulí-Oller & Joel Sandonís, 2007. "Downstream Mergers And Entry," Working Papers. Serie AD 2007-21, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).
    10. Chrysovalantou Milliou & Joel Sandonis, 2018. "Manufacturer Mergers and Product Variety in Vertically Related Markets," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 18(1), pages 1-24, March.
    11. Leslie M. Marx & Greg Shaffer, 2007. "Upfront payments and exclusion in downstream markets," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 38(3), pages 823-843, September.
    12. 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.
    13. Liang Guo & Ganesh Iyer, 2013. "Multilateral Bargaining and Downstream Competition," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 32(3), pages 411-430, May.
    14. Aghadadashli, Hamid & Dertwinkel-Kalt, Markus & Wey, Christian, 2016. "The Nash bargaining solution in vertical relations with linear input prices," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 291-294.
    15. Ramon Faulí‐Oller & Joel Sandonís & Juana Santamaría, 2011. "Downstream Mergers And Upstream Investment," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 79(4), pages 884-898, July.
    16. Bakaouka, Elpiniki & Milliou, Chrysovalantou, 2018. "Vertical licensing, input pricing, and entry," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 66-96.
    17. Luca Lambertini & Giuseppe Pignataro, 2019. "On the social (sub)optimality of divisionalization under product differentiation," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 128(3), pages 225-238, December.
    18. Vettas, Nikolaos & Petrakis, Emmanuel & Milliou, Chrysovalantou, 2003. "Endogenous Contracts Under Bargaining in Competing Vertical Chains," CEPR Discussion Papers 3976, Centre for Economic Policy Research.
    19. Ramon Fauli-Oller, 2024. "Divisionalization and symmetric product differentiation," Economic Theory Bulletin, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 12(2), pages 211-217, December.
    20. 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.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • L10 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - General
    • L11 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms
    • L20 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - General

    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:ivi:wpasad:2001-28. 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: Departamento de Edición (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ievages.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.