An ecosystem comprises all downstream products that employ a certain upstream input. Consumers make irreversible investments to join an ecosystem before downstream prices are set. By committing to buy products that use the specific ecosystem input, they are at risk of being held-up. Unable to...

How do vertical mergers impact consumers? Though often presumed to eliminate double marginalization and generate efficiencies, theory predicts that vertical integration in multiproduct industries may cause price changes that hurt consumers even in the absence of market foreclosure. We measure...

This paper shows the conditions for consumer sorting to be profitable. Sorting of low quality goods dampens their substitutability with high quality goods and can raise firm's profit even when sorting lowers profit from low quality sales considered alone

Retailers act as intermediaries between manufacturers and consumers. When retailers sell their own products alongside those of manufacturers, what is the effect on competition? Further, how does this effect hinge on market power? In this paper, I theoretically and empirically study the effect of...

Manufacturers frequently post non-binding public price recommendations, but neither the rationale for this practice nor its impact on prices is well understood. I develop a model in which recommendations signal a manufacturer's production cost to searching consumers, who then form beliefs about...

Analyzing a sequential bargaining framework with one retailer and two suppliers of substitutable goods, we show that slotting fees may emerge as a result of a rent-shifting mechanism when consumer shopping costs are taken into account. If consumers economize on their shopping costs by bundling...

Analyzing a sequential bargaining framework with one retailer and two suppliers of substitutable goods, we show that slotting fees may emerge as a result of a rent-shifting mechanism when consumer shopping costs are taken into account. If consumers economize on their shopping costs by bundling...

We analyze how consumer preferences for one-stop shopping affect the bargaining relationship between a retailer and its suppliers. One-stop shopping preferences create "demand complementarities" among otherwise independent products which lead to two opposing effects on upstream merger...

Consumers increasingly prefer to bundle their purchases into a single shopping trip, inducing complementaries between initially independent or substitutable goods. Taking this one-stop shopping behavior into account, we show that slotting fees may emerge as a result of a rent-shifting mechanism...

We analyze how consumer preferences for one-stop shopping a¤ect the (Nash) bargaining relationships between a retailer and its suppliers. One-stop shopping preferences create demand complementarities among otherwise independent products which lead to two opposing effects on upstream merger...