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...

This paper presents an experimental study of exclusive dealing with an active entrant seller. We compare three treatments, which differ in terms of the sellers' moves, and find significant differences to the incumbent seller's exclusive offer and exclusion rates. Compared to the case where the...

The United States central government enactment of the 1866 Post Roads Act preempted state and municipal telegraph franchise entry barriers. Like present-day telecommunication companies, local franchise regulations were an entry barrier to United States telegraph companies. These pre-1866 state...

This study constructs a model of a relationship-specific investment in a dynamic framework. Although such investment decreases operating costs and increases the current joint profits of firms in vertical relationships, its specificity reduces the ex-post flexibility to change a trading partner...

Scholars and courts have long debated whether and when "parallel pricing" — adoption of the same price by every firm in a market — should be considered a violation of antitrust law. But there has been a comparative neglect of the importance of "parallel exclusion" — conduct, engaged in by...

The reluctance of antitrust to condemn parallel exclusion permits oligopolies to be entrenched. This is because parallel exclusion — multiple-firm conduct that inhibits market entrants — cannot satisfy the current strictures of monopolization, which is understood to prohibit single-firm...

This paper investigates the entry decision of a firm into a market that is protected by a patent. It shows how entrants use the possibility to study existing prior art before taking their entry decision. Studying prior art reduces the information asymmetry that arises due to the fact that patent...

The paper explores the role of R&D investments reducing fixed production costs in entry deterrence. An incumbent monopolist and a potential entrant can perform R&D to reduce their fixed production costs, with bidirectional and asymmetric technological spillovers. It is shown that deterrence,...

Do firms increase product lines to deter entry and, if so, when is such a strategy successful? We use data from UK pharmaceuticals to examine how incumbents respond to change in the threat of entry. In line with the entry deterrence motive, originators' product launch rate is higher when the...

We consider exclusive contracts as a survival strategy for a local incumbent manufacturer facing a multinational manufacturer’s entry. Although both manufacturers prefer to trade with an efficient local distributor, trading with inefficient competitive distributors is acceptable only to the...