This paper studies the welfare consequences of a vertical merger that raises rivals' costs when downstream competition is a la Cournot between firms with constant asymmetric marginal costs. The main result is that such a vertical merger can nevertheless improve welfare if it involves a...

This paper analyzes vertical integration incentives in a bilaterally duopolistic industry where upstream producers bargain with downstream retailers on terms of supply. In the applied framework integration does not affect the total output produced, but it affects the distribution of rents among...

We study the incentives of a downstream firm that sources its core input from a vertically integrated supplier to license its patented technology to an external firm. Licensing transforms the licensee into both a direct downstream competitor and a customer of the supplier. The vertically...

Contractual inefficiencies within supply chains increase an input price above its marginal cost, therefore they are considered detrimental to consumer surplus. We argue that such inefficiencies may be beneficial to consumers in quality-differentiated markets. Indeed, enhancing contractual...

In many markets, firms offering low-quality goods are more prominent than firms offering high-quality goods. Then, consumers are perfectly informed about the good of the prominent low-quality firm but incur search costs to bring the high-quality good of a competitor to mind. We analyze under...

This paper studies the impact of cooperative R&D on innovation, welfare, and profitability in vertically related industries with differentiated products. The model incorporates two vertically related industries, with horizontal spillovers within industries and vertical spillovers between them....

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...