Innovators who have developed advanced technologies, along with launching new products by themselves, often license these technologies to their rivals. When a firm launches a new product, product positioning is also an important matter. Using a standard linear city model with two firms, we...

This study constructs a model for examining anticompetitive exclusive supply contracts that prevent an upstream supplier from selling input to a new downstream firm. With regard to the technology to transform the input produced by the supplier, as an entrant becomes increasingly efficient, its...

We provide a model in which upstream producers, whose production cost is quadratic in quantity, sell their products through two distribution channels, a traditional channel and an external retailer. Some producers (called "large" producers) supply to both channels, whereas other producers...

This study constructs a simplest model to examine anticompetitive exclusive contracts that prevent a downstream buyer from buying input from a new up-stream supplier. Incorporating Nash bargaining into the standard one-buyer-one-supplier framework in the Chicago School critique, we show a...

We consider a downstream oligopoly model with one dominant and several fringe retailers, who purchase a manufacturing product from a monopoly supplier. We then examine how the supplier's outside option influences the relation between the dominant retailer's bargaining power and the equilibrium...

Although outsourcing input production has long been considered as an important approach to help downstream manufacturers enhance structural efficiency, we provide a theoretical explanation for why outsourcing may negatively affect downstream firms' profitability. We consider a duopoly model...

This study constructs a model of anticompetitive exclusive-offer competition between two existing upstream firms. Under exclusive-offer competition, the upstream firm's profit depends on the rival's exclusive offer. If the rival makes an exclusive offer acceptable for the downstream firm, the...

We study a duopoly model where each firm chooses personalized prices for its targeted consumers, who can be active or passive in identity management. Active consumers can bypass price discrimination and have access to the price offered to non-targeted consumers, which passive consumers cannot....

We propose simple dual-channel models in which an upstream manufacturer trades with a downstream retailer that is able to engage in cost-reducing activities. When the manufacturer determines whether to encroach on the downstream market after observing the retailer's effort level, the threat of...

This paper examines the role of outside options in a downstream duopoly with exclusive vertical relations as in the Japanese automobile industry. In our setup, the downstream firms have outside options, and two upstream firms with exclusive relations can engage in cost reducing investments. More...