Competition with Exclusive Contracts and Market-Share Discounts

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Calzolari, Giacomo; Denicolo, Vincenzo
• 署名单位: University of Bologna; University of Leicester; University of Bologna
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0002-8282
• DOI: 10.1257/aer.103.6.2384
• 发表日期: 2013
• 页码: 2384-2411
• 关键词: common-agency; Buyer power; PARTICIPATION; revelation

摘要

We analyze firms that compete by means of exclusive contracts and market-share discounts (conditional on the seller's share of customers' total purchases). With incomplete information about demand, firms have a unilateral incentive to use these contractual arrangements to better extract buyers' informational rents. However, exclusive contracts intensify competition, thus reducing prices and profits and (in all Pareto undominated equilibria) increasing welfare. Market-share discounts, by contrast, produce a double marginalization effect that leads to higher prices and harms buyers. We discuss the implications of these results for competition policy.