Anticompetitive Bundling When Buyers Compete

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: DE Corniere, Alexandre; Taylor, Greg
• 署名单位: Universite de Toulouse; Universite Toulouse 1 Capitole; Toulouse School of Economics; University of Oxford
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-MICROECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7669
• DOI: 10.1257/mic.20230051
• 发表日期: 2024
• 页码: 293-328
• 关键词: naked exclusion; leverage; entry; POWER; LAW

摘要

We study the profitability of bundling by an upstream firm that licenses technologies to downstream competitors and that faces competition for one of its technologies. In an otherwise standard Chicago -style model, the existence of downstream competition can make inefficient bundling profitable. Forcing downstream firms to use an inefficient technology reassures each one that it will face weak competition. This allows the upstream firm to extract more profit through its monopolized technology. A similar logic can make it profitable to degrade interoperability with rival technologies, even without foreclosing competition. Bundling is most profitable when downstream competition is intense and technologies complementary.