In a model with manufacturer and retailer competition, we show that RPM facilitates manufacturer cartels when retailers have an outside option to selling the manufacturer's product. Because retailers have an effective outside option, the manufacturer can only ensure contract acceptance by...

In a market with two exclusive manufacturer-retailer pairs, we show that colluding manufacturers may not be able to attain supra-competitive profits when contracts with retailers are secret. The stability of manufacturer collusion depends on the retailers' beliefs. We consider various dynamic...

It is widely believed that vertical integration in an environment without foreclosure, or more generally without any mechanism that restricts competition among firms, raises the welfare of consumers. In this paper we show that this can be overturned in a standard setting. We consider a vertical...

This paper empirically examines the effects of financial crises on the organization of production of multinational enterprises. We construct a panel of European multinational networks from 2003 through 2015. We use as a financial shock the increase in risk premia between August 2007 and July...

Improving a company's bargaining position is often cited as a chief motivation to vertically integrate with suppliers. This paper expands on that view in building a new theory of vertical integration. In my model firms integrate to gain bargaining power against other suppliers in the production...

Taxes levied on production processes (e.g. VAT), are today a very important source of government revenues in developed economies. Theories of optimal taxation conclude that these taxes are detrimental to production efficiency, when firms operate in perfectly competitive markets. These theories...

We examine cost-reducing investment in vertically-related oligopolies, where firms may be vertically integrated or separated. Analyzing a standard linear Cournot model, we show that: (i) Integrated firms invest more than separated competitors. (ii) Vertical integration increases own investment...

We examine the competitive effects of the vertical integration of gasoline refineries and retailers in the U.S. Adapting the first-order condition approach of static oligopoly games to the analysis of vertically related oligopolies, we develop a novel framework for directly evaluating the...

We examine the interplay of endogenous vertical integration and costreducing downstream investment in successive oligopoly. We start from a linear Cournot model to motivate our more general reducedform framework. For this general framework, we establish the following main results: First,...

We examine vertical backward integration in a reducedform model of successive oligopolies. Our key findings are: (i) There may be asymmetric equilibria where some firms integrate and others remain separated, even if firms are symmetric initially; (ii) Efficient firms are more likely to integrate...