Excerpt from Equilibrium Vertical Foreclosure The competitive effects of vertical mergers have long been a source of controversy in economics and antitrust. This paper is concerned with vertical foreclosure, one of the central issues in that debate. Vertical foreclosure concerns the exclusion that results when unintegrated downstream rivals are foreclosed from the input supplies controlled by the firm that integrates. Analogous effects occur when unintegrated upstream competitors are foreclosed from selling to the downstream division of the integrated firm. While the foreclosure argument has been accepted in leading court decisions and policy guidelines, critics maintain that the theory itself is logically flawed. They claim that a vertically integrated firm will have no incentive to exclude its rivals, and if it did try to exclude them, rivals could protect themselves by contracting with other unintegrated firms. This controversy can be seen more clearly by making the vertical foreclosure theory more specific. According to the theory, a single vertical merger can disadvantage downstream rivals as follows. Consider a market in which the supply of inputs is competitive before the merger and there are no production efficiency benefits gained from vertical integration. After the merger, suppose the upstream division of the now-integrated firm refuses to supply inputs to the rivals of its downstream division. This foreclosure of rivals from these supplies means that remaining suppliers will face less competition. As a result, they may be able to increase their profits by raising their input prices to the unintegrated downstream firms. These higher prices benefit the vertically integrated firm. If rivals costs of inputs are increased, they will be forced to reduce their production and raise the prices they charge in the downstream market. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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This paper develops an equilibrium model of vertical foreclosure with the choice of input specifications. In this model, vertical foreclosure occurs as the upstream division of the integrated firm makes a specialized input for its sister downstream division while it would, as an independent firm, provide a generalized input. The changes in incentives with vertical integration can be explained by the externalities the choice of a specialized input entails; vertical integration allows the upstream firm to internalize the benefit of raising the rival firm's costs at the downstream level. The choice of a specialized input by the integrated firm serves as a natural commitment mechanism not to supply the rival downstream firms and, thus, enables us to dispense with the controversial price commitment assumption in the literature. We derive conditions for equilibrium vertical foreclosure to occur and discuss its welfare consequences.

We report the results of experiments designed to test recent theories of vertical foreclosure. Consistent with the theory, vertical integration improves the upstream firm's ability to commit to restricting output to the monopoly level, as does the use of public contracts. Public contracts are not a perfect substitute for vertical integration, however: integration allows more surplus to be extracted from the unintegrated downstream firm, a bargaining effect that has been underemphasized in the recent foreclosure literature. Motivated by some observations that are difficult to reconcile with existing theory, we extend the theory to allow downstream firms to have heterogeneous (rather than purely passive or symmetric) out-of-equilibrium beliefs.

This book, first published in 2006, offers an explanation of the development paths of post-World War II Korea and Taiwan.

This book examines transaction cost economics, the influential theoretical perspective on organizations and industry that was the subject of Oliver Williamson's seminal book,Markets and Hierarchies (1975). Written by leading economists, sociologists, and political scientists, the essays collected here reflect the fruitful intellectual exchange that is occurring across the major social science disciplines. They examine transaction cost economics' general conceptual orientation, its specific theoretical propositions, its applications to policy, and its use in systematic empirical research. The chapters include classic texts, broad review essays, reflective commentaries, and several new contributions to a wide range of topics, including organizations, regulations and law, institutions, strategic management, game theory, entrepreneurship, innovation, finance, and technical information. The book begins with an overview of theory and research on transaction cost economics, highlighting the specific accomplishments of scholars working within the perspective and emphasizing the enormous influence that transaction cost reasoning exerts on the social sciences. The following section covers conceptual uses for the transaction cost framework and major theoretical or methodological elements within it, such as bounded rationality. While advancing some interesting theoretical propositions, these chapters are in fact more ambitious: each examines a specific field, area, or research program and attempts to fashion a new way of thinking about research questions. In the section on industrial applications, contributors study the application of transaction cost theory to a range of problems in utilities, telecommunications, laser printing, and early international trade. The book closes with four microanalytical chapters that delve into the structures and behaviors of specific aspects of firms and organizations: boards of directors, equity structures, employment models, human resource policies and practices, technology strategies, and innovation events. Firms, Markets, and Hierarchies collects excellent social science work on transaction cost economics, taking stock of its status, charting its future development, and fostering its renewal and evolution.