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...

This paper develops a model of successive oligopolies with endogenous market entry, allowing for varying degrees of product differentiation and entry costs in both markets. Our analysis shows that the downstream conditions dominate the overall profitability of the two-tier structure while the...

Online-Plattformen wie Suchmaschinen und Marktplätze, die als Intermediäre zwischen verschiedenen Kundengruppen agieren, rücken zunehmend in den Fokus zahlreicher Wettbewerbsbehörden weltweit. Aufgrund ihrer mehrseitigen und dynamischen Strukturen kann sich die Marktposition einzelner...

This paper summarizes the peculiarities of online markets and discusses recent antitrust cases related to online markets. Following a brief description of the online markets' characteristics and potential tendencies for concentration the paper first discusses the antitrust allegations and...

We analyze the best price clauses (BPCs) of online travel agents (OTAs) using meta-search price data of nearly 30,000 hotels in different countries. We find that BPCs influence the pricing and availability of hotel rooms across online sales channels. In particular, hotels publish their offers...

We analyze the best price clauses (BPCs) of online travel agents (OTAs) using meta-search price data of more than 45,000 hotels in different countries. Although OTAs apparently have not changed their standard commission rates following the partial ban of BPCs in Europe, we find that BPCs do...

At present, there is a wide debate on regulating geo-blocking, an online practice that prevents consumers from buying or having access to products and services from another country. This practice is not only used by retailers, but is also of great importance in the market for digital visual...

We provide a novel intuition for the observation that many brand manufacturers have restricted their retailers’ ability to resell brand products online. Our approach builds on models of salience according to which price disparities across distribution channels guide a consumer’s attention...

We study the rationale for the use of exclusivity to protect transfer of technology in subcontracting agreements. The legal possibility arises through the EU Notice on Subcontracting. Empirically, the link between exclusive agreements and technology transfer among firms in the automotive supply...

We re-consider the bilateral bargaining problem of a multi-product, manufacturer-retailer trading relationship. O'Brien and Shaffer (Rand JE 35:573-598, 2005) have shown that the unbundling of contracts leads to downward distorted production levels if seller power is strong, while otherwise the...