The recent literature on vertical foreclosure suggests that vertical integration can have the anticompetitive effect of enabling an upstream firm to commit to restricting output to downstream firms at the monopoly level. We allow the upstream firm to make an ex-ante capital precommitment. We show that, if integration is outlawed, the upstream firm will distort capital downward as an alternative device to restrict output. We show that this alternative may be socially less efficient than vertical integration.

Few people would disagree with the proposition that horizontal mergers have the potential to restrict output and raise consumer prices. In contrast, there is much less agreement about the anti-competitive effects of vertical mergers. The purpose of this paper is to develop a theoretical model showing how vertical integration changes the nature of competition in upstream and downstream markets and identifying conditions under which market foreclosure will be a consequence or even a purpose of such integration. In contrast to much of the literature, we do not restrict upstream and downstream firms to particular contractual arrangements, but instead allow firms to choose from a full set of contractual arrangements both when integrated and when not. We also allow non-integrated firms to respond optimally to the integration decisions of other firms, either by remaining nonintegrated, exiting the industry or integrating too (i.e. bandwagoning). In a final section we use our analysis to shed some light on a number of prominent vertical merger cases, involving computer reservation systems for airlines, the cement industry and the St. Louis Terminal Railroad.

The Finance Division of the Faculty of Commerce and Business Administration at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, presents the full text of a working paper entitled "Downstream Competition, Foreclosure, and Vertical Integration," by Gilles Chemla. The paper discusses the impact of competition among downstream firms on an upstream firm's payoff and on its incentive to vertically integrate when firms on both segments negotiate optimal contracts.

Law and Economics of Vertical Integration and Control focuses on the processes, methodologies, and approaches involved in the law and economics of vertical integration and control. The publication first elaborates on transaction costs, fixed proportions and contractual alternatives, and variable proportions and contractual alternatives. Discussions focus on sales revenue royalties, ownership integration, output royalties, important product-specific services, successive monopoly, advantages and limitations of internal transfers, and transaction cost determinants. The text then examines vertical integration under uncertainty and vertical integration without contractual alternatives. The book ponders on legal treatment of ownership integration and per se illegal contractual controls. Topics include tying arrangements, public policy assessment, resale price maintenance, vertical integration and the Sherman Act, market foreclosure doctrine, and the 1982 Merger Guidelines. The text also takes a look at contractual controls that are not illegal per se, alternative legal rules, and antitrust policy. The publication is a dependable reference for researchers interested in the law and economics of vertical integration and control.