The paper explores incentives for strategic vertical separation of firms in a framework of a simple duopoly model. Each firm chooses either to be a retailer of its own good (vertical integration) or to sell its good through an independent exclusive retailer (vertical separation). In the latter...

We investigate the incentive for partial vertical integration, namely, partial ownership agreements between manufacturers and retailers, when the retailers are privately informed about their production costs and engage in differentiated good price competition. Partial vertical integration...

Many high technology goods are based on standards that require several essential patents owned by different IP holders. This gives rise to a complements and a double mark-up problem. We compare the welfare effects of two different business strategies dealing with these problems. Vertical...

This paper analyzes the effects of specific and ad valorem taxation in an industry with downstream and upstream oligopoly. We find that in the short run, i.e. when the number of firms in both markets is exogenous, the results concerning tax incidence tend to be qualitatively similar to models...

We consider a software vendor first selling a monopoly platform and then an application running on this platform. He may face competition by an entrant in the applications market. The platform monopolist can benefit from competition for three reasons. First, his profits from the platform...

In some markets vertically integrated firms sell directly to final customers hut also to independent downstream firms with whom they then compete on the downstream market. It is often argued that resellers intensify competition and benefit consumers, in particular when wholesale prices are...

Recent years have witnessed an enormous amount of reorganization of the corporate sector in the US and in Europe. This paper examines the role of market competition for this trend in corporate reorganization. We find that at intermediate levels of competition the CEO of the corporation decides...

We analyze the competitive effects of backward vertical integration by a partially vertically integrated firm that competes with non-integrated firms both upstream and downstream. We show that vertical integration is procompetitive under fairly general conditions. It can be anticompetitive only...

We develop a model of vertical merger waves leading to input foreclosure. When all upstream firms become vertically integrated, the input price can increase substantially above marginal cost despite Bertrand competition in the input market. Input foreclosure is easiest to sustain when upstream...

I develop a model in the spirit of Ordover, Saloner, and Salop (1990), in which two upstream firms compete to supply a homogeneous input to two downstream firms, who compete in prices with differentiated products in a downstream market. Upstream firms are allowed to offer exclusive two-part...