We provide new evidence of vertical foreclosure in the U.S. cable television market, primarily using a 2004 database of 680 cable systems. Focusing on four program network groups (basic outdoor entertainment, basic cartoon, basic movie, and premium movie), we find that more frequent carriage of affiliated networks and less frequent carriage of rival networks, a pattern identified by previous empirical studies, persists in spite of extensive channel capacity expansion and digitization of cable systems, as well as new competition from DBS - developments that might be expected to reduce or eliminate vertical foreclosure effects. We also find a new form of vertical foreclosure in the digital environment: integrated cable operators that do carry rival networks are more likely to position them on higher priced digital tiers, or in other ways that appear to limit demand for them.

We investigate a vertically integrated theater's contract and screen allocation decisions in a movie industry characterized by demand uncertainty, price uniformity, and revenue-sharing contracts. Based on a simple theoretical model that describes the decisions of theaters and movie distributors, we derive two mechanisms of foreclosure behavior, termed the selection and allocation effects herein. Our empirical results suggest that integrated theaters not only impose a higher quality standard for movies from independent distributors but also play their affiliated movies more. Further, the magnitude of the foreclosure effects varies by movie quality.

Exclusive contracts are one of the most controversial topics in the economic analysis of antitrust. Yet, very few empirical papers analyze the determinants and the consequences of exclusive contracts. In this paper, I study exclusive contracts between hamburger restaurants and Israeli shopping malls, in which mall owners commit to prohibiting additional hamburger restaurants from entering their malls. I investigate the determinants of these exclusive contracts and examine how such contracts affect the number of hamburger restaurants and their sales. I show that exclusive contracts are less likely to be adopted in larger malls, in malls that face more competition from other malls, and in malls that opened before 1993, when McDonald's and Burger King entered the Israeli market. I then use the mall's opening year - before or after 1993 - as an instrumental variable to estimate a negative effect of exclusive contracts on the number of restaurants and on total mall hamburger sales. My findings are generally consistent with anti-competitive vertical foreclosure models.

Vertical rebates are prominently used across a wide range of industries. These con- tracts may induce greater retail effort, but may also prompt retailers to drop competing products. We study these offsetting efficiency and foreclosure effects empirically, using data from one retailer. Using a field experiment, we show how the rebate allocates the cost of effort between manufacturer and retailer. We estimate structural models of demand and retailer behavior to quantify the rebate's effect on assortment and retailer effort. We find that the rebate increases industry profitability and consumer utility, but fails to maximize social surplus and leads to upstream foreclosure.

Handbook of Industrial Organization Volume 4 highlights new advances in the field, with this new volume presenting interesting chapters. Each chapter is written by an international board of authors. Part of the renowned Handbooks in Economics series Chapters are contributed by some of the leading experts in their fields A source, reference and teaching supplement for industrial organizations or industrial economists