The transaction cost approach to the organization of firms has been among the most significant advances in industrial organization in the last twenty-five years. Much of this work has taken the Transaction Cost Economics view of Williamson (1975, 1979, 1985) and Klein, Crawford, and Alchian...

In this paper, we provide a conceptual framework for understanding the phenomenon of exclusive dealing, and we explore the motivations for and effects of its use. For a broad class of models, we characterize the outcome of a contracting game in which manufacturers may employ exclusive dealing...