IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ste/nystbu/93-09.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Benefits of Franchising and Vertical Disintergration in Monopolistic Competition for Locationally Differentiated Products

Author

Listed:
  • Nicholas Economides

Abstract

A model of franchising competition in locationally differentiated products is constructed. A franchisor (upstream firm) collects a marginal transfer fee per unit of output sold by a franchisee (downstream firm). For example, the marginal transfer fee can be realized as a markup on variable inputs supplied by the franchisor. A franchisor also collects a lump-sum rent (commonly called "franchising fee") from each franchisee. Acting in the first stage, a franchisor can manipulate the degree of competition in the downstream market through his choice of the marginal fee while keeping the franchisee's profits at zero through the lump sum rent. Franchisees choose prices for the final goods in the second stage. It is shown that, at the unique subgame-perfect equilibrium, the marginal fee is above marginal cost. Compared to a regime of vertically integrated firms, prices are higher, there are more numerous outlets when contractual costs are small, and social surplus is lower in the franchising regime.

Suggested Citation

  • Nicholas Economides, 1993. "The Benefits of Franchising and Vertical Disintergration in Monopolistic Competition for Locationally Differentiated Products," Working Papers 93-09, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, Department of Economics, revised Mar 1993.
    • Handle: RePEc:ste:nystbu:93-09
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://raven.stern.nyu.edu/networks/93-09.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Steven C. Salop, 1979. "Monopolistic Competition with Outside Goods," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 10(1), pages 141-156, Spring.
    2. Mathewson, G Frank & Winter, Ralph A, 1985. "The Economics of Franchise Contracts," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 28(3), pages 503-526, October.
    3. Fershtman, Chaim & Judd, Kenneth L, 1987. "Equilibrium Incentives in Oligopoly," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(5), pages 927-940, December.
    4. Lin, Y Joseph, 1988. "Oligopoly and Vertical Integration: Note," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(1), pages 251-254, March.
    5. Economides, Nicholas, 1989. "Symmetric equilibrium existence and optimality in differentiated product markets," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 178-194, February.
    6. Katz, Barbara G. & Joel Owen, 1992. "On the existence of franchise contracts and some of their implications," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 10(4), pages 567-593, December.
    7. Klein, Benjamin & Saft, Lester F, 1985. "The Law and Economics of Franchise Tying Contracts," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 28(2), pages 345-361, May.
    8. Steven D. Sklivas, 1987. "The Strategic Choice of Managerial Incentives," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 18(3), pages 452-458, Autumn.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Rajesh K. Aggarwal & Andrew A. Samwick, 1999. "Executive Compensation, Strategic Competition, and Relative Performance Evaluation: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 54(6), pages 1999-2043, December.
    2. Hamilton, Stephen F & Stiegert, Kyle, 2000. "Vertical Coordination, Antitrust Law, and International Trade," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 43(1), pages 143-156, April.
    3. Ziss, Steffen, 1999. "Divisionalization and strategic managerial incentives in oligopoly under uncertainty," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 17(8), pages 1163-1187, November.
    4. Irmen, Andreas, 1998. "Precommitment in Competing Vertical Chains," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 12(4), pages 333-359, September.
    5. Belleflamme,Paul & Peitz,Martin, 2015. "Industrial Organization," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107687899, November.
    6. Bakaouka, Elpiniki & Milliou, Chrysovalantou, 2018. "Vertical licensing, input pricing, and entry," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 66-96.
    7. Fabian Herweg & Antonio Rosato, 2020. "Bait and ditch: Consumer naïveté and salesforce incentives," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(1), pages 97-121, January.
    8. Ziss, Steffen, 2001. "Horizontal mergers and delegation," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 19(3-4), pages 471-492, March.
    9. R. Andergassen, 2011. "Board of director collusion, managerial incentives and firm values," Working Papers wp795, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    10. 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.
    11. Corts, Kenneth S. & Neher, Darwin V., 2003. "Credible delegation," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 47(3), pages 395-407, June.
    12. Caillaud, Bernard & Rey, Patrick, 1995. "Strategic aspects of vertical delegation," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 39(3-4), pages 421-431, April.
    13. Corchón Luis Carlos & Zudenkova Galina, 2013. "The Welfare Effects of Location and Quality in Oligopoly," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 13(2), pages 1143-1178, July.
    14. Ya-Chin Wang, 2013. "Optimal R&D Policy and Managerial Delegation Under Vertically Differentiated Duopoly," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 81(4), pages 605-624, December.
    15. Kyung Hwan Baik, 2007. "Equilibrium Contingent Compensation in Contests with Delegation," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 73(4), pages 986-1002, April.
    16. Claude d'Aspremont & Rodolphe Dos Santos Ferreira & Louis-André Gérard-Varet, 2007. "Competition For Market Share Or For Market Size: Oligopolistic Equilibria With Varying Competitive Toughness," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 48(3), pages 761-784, August.
    17. David Gaddis Ross, 2012. "On Evaluation Costs in Strategic Factor Markets: The Implications for Competition and Organizational Design," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(4), pages 791-804, April.
    18. Ya‐chin Wang & Leonard F.s. Wang, 2009. "Equivalence Of Competition Mode In A Vertically Differentiated Duopoly With Delegation," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 77(4), pages 577-590, December.
    19. Evangelos Mitrokostas & Emmanuel Petrakis, 2008. "Do Firms' Owners Delegate both Short-Run and Long-Run Decisions to Their Managers in Equilibrium?," Working Papers 0815, University of Crete, Department of Economics.
    20. Dinah A. Cohen-Vernik & Li Yang & Amit Pazgal, 2022. "Strategic Delegation with Differentiated Products," Customer Needs and Solutions, Springer;Institute for Sustainable Innovation and Growth (iSIG), vol. 9(3), pages 66-73, December.

    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:ste:nystbu:93-09. 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: Amanda Murphy (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ednyuus.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.