This short essay introduces a special issue of The Journal of Industrial Economics on vertical relationships, including both vertical integration and vertical restraints. In the last few years, there has been a resurgence of theoretical and empirical work on vertical relationships, and they are...

The purpose of this paper is to develop a model of product differentiation in which there is an asymmetry, namely that some customers are easier to serve than others. It turns out that profits are negatively related to difficulty of service, and that profits and market share are negatively...

This paper models retail pharmacy distribution in terms of a quasimonopolistically competitive market structure in which government remuneration determines industry numbers. The model is calibrated using industry estimates for metropolitan Melbourne and comparisons are made with actual pharmacy...

We investigate price dispersion in a retail market (car tyres) characterised by outlets each selling a range of products, some of which are manufactured by their owners. Consumers face substantial price dispersion across outlets even for very tightly defined products. We show that this price...