Vertical integration by a monopsonist is generally believed not to harm consumers. This paper demonstrates, in a natural economic setting, that this conventional wisdom may not hold. We model bargaining between a monopsonist and independent suppliers when it is difficult to write binding...

We study vertical integration in the form of financial ownership as a way to improve the bargaining position of a firm in sequential negotiations. In our model an upstream monopolist bargains sequentially with two downstream firms over production agreements. If the bargaining sequence is...

Promotion tournaments play an important role for the provision of incentives in firms. In this paper, we extend research on single-stage rank-order tournaments and analyze behavior in multi-stage elimination tournaments. The main treatment of our laboratory experiment is a two-stage tournament...

This paper considers an environment where two principals sequentially contract with a common agent and studies the exchange of information between the two bilateral relationships. We show that when (a) the upstream principal is not personally interested in the decisions taken by the downstream...

This paper studies the exchange of information between two principals who contract sequentially with the same agent, as in the case of a buyer who purchases from multiple sellers. We show that when (a) the upstream principal is not personally interested in the downstream level of trade, (b) the...