IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/red/sed014/1177.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Efficiency and Foreclosure Effects of All-Units Discounts: Empirical Evidence

Author

Listed:
  • Julie Mortimer

    (Boston College)

  • Christopher Conlon

    (Columbia University)

Abstract

We study an All-Units Discount, in which a downstream firm pays a linear wholesale price up to a quantity threshold, beyond which a discount applies to all future and previous units. Such contracts, which are common in many industries, potentially have both efficiency and foreclosure effects. We estimate a structural model of demand and retailer effort to quantify the efficiency gains induced by the contracts, and to identify cases in which the contract results in either efficient or inefficient exclusion of competing products. We show how the contract allocates the cost of a stock-out between upstream and downstream firms, and find evidence that the contract induces inefficient exclusion in the confection industry. Finally, we point out that the impact of upstream mergers in many markets is likely to be felt not through the price in the final-goods market, but rather in the wholesale market. We examine the impact of various upstream mergers on the willingness of the dominant firm to offer rebate contracts, and the impact that the rebate contracts have on social welfare.

Suggested Citation

  • Julie Mortimer & Christopher Conlon, 2014. "Efficiency and Foreclosure Effects of All-Units Discounts: Empirical Evidence," 2014 Meeting Papers 1177, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    • Handle: RePEc:red:sed014:1177
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://red-files-public.s3.amazonaws.com/meetpapers/2014/paper_1177.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rust, John, 1987. "Optimal Replacement of GMC Bus Engines: An Empirical Model of Harold Zurcher," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(5), pages 999-1033, September.
    2. Brickley, James A. & Dark, Frederick H., 1987. "The choice of organizational form The case of franchising," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 401-420, June.
    3. V. Joseph Hotz & Robert A. Miller, 1993. "Conditional Choice Probabilities and the Estimation of Dynamic Models," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 60(3), pages 497-529.
    4. Christopher T. Conlon & Julie Holland Mortimer, 2013. "Demand Estimation under Incomplete Product Availability," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(4), pages 1-30, November.
    5. Klein, Benjamin & Murphy, Kevin M, 1988. "Vertical Restraints as Contract Enforcement Mechanisms," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 31(2), pages 265-297, October.
    6. Shaffer, Greg, 1991. "Capturing Strategic Rent: Full-Line Forcing, Brand Discounts, Aggregate Rebates, and Maximum Resale Price Maintenance," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(5), pages 557-575, September.
    7. Chiara Fumagalli & Massimo Motta, 2006. "Exclusive Dealing and Entry, when Buyers Compete," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(3), pages 785-795, June.
    8. Raymond Deneckere & Howard P. Marvel & James Peck, 1996. "Demand Uncertainty, Inventories, and Resale Price Maintenance," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 111(3), pages 885-913.
    9. Steven T. Berry, 1994. "Estimating Discrete-Choice Models of Product Differentiation," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 25(2), pages 242-262, Summer.
    10. Train,Kenneth E., 2009. "Discrete Choice Methods with Simulation," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521747387, September.
    11. Jean Tirole, 1988. "The Theory of Industrial Organization," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262200716, April.
    12. Francine Lafontaine, 1992. "Agency Theory and Franchising: Some Empirical Results," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 23(2), pages 263-283, Summer.
    13. Christopher T. Conlon & Julie Holland Mortimer, 2010. "Effects of Product Availability: Experimental Evidence," NBER Working Papers 16506, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Michael D. Whinston & Ilya R. Segal, 2000. "Naked Exclusion: Comment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(1), pages 296-309, March.
    15. Andrea Shepard, 1993. "Contractual Form, Retail Price, and Asset Characteristics in Gasoline Retailing," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 24(1), pages 58-77, Spring.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Li, Jia & Moul, Charles C., 2015. "Who should handle retail? Vertical contracts, customer service, and social welfare in a Chinese mobile phone market," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 29-43.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Christopher T. Conlon & Julie Holland Mortimer, 2021. "Efficiency and Foreclosure Effects of Vertical Rebates: Empirical Evidence," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 129(12), pages 3357-3404.
    2. Victor Aguirregabiria & Margaret Slade, 2017. "Empirical models of firms and industries," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 50(5), pages 1445-1488, December.
    3. John Asker & Heski Bar-Isaac, 2010. "Exclusionary Minimum Resale Price Maintenance," NBER Working Papers 16564, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. John Asker & Heski Bar-Isaac, 2012. "Vertical Practices Facilitating Exclusion," Working Papers 12-20, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, Department of Economics.
    5. Chen, Chia-Wen, 2014. "Estimating the foreclosure effect of exclusive dealing: Evidence from the entry of specialty beer producers," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 47-64.
    6. Kenji, Matsui, 2011. "Resale price maintenance for supply chains distributing products with demand uncertainty," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(2), pages 375-387, December.
    7. Timothy Bresnahan & Jonathan Levin, 2012. "Vertical Integration and Market Structure [The Handbook of Organizational Economics]," Introductory Chapters,, Princeton University Press.
    8. Brickley, James A, 1999. "Incentive Conflicts and Contractual Restraints: Evidence from Franchising," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 42(2), pages 745-774, October.
    9. Holmes, Thomas J. & Sieg, Holger, 2015. "Structural Estimation in Urban Economics," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 69-114, Elsevier.
    10. Mogens Fosgerau & Julien Monardo & André de Palma, 2024. "The Inverse Product Differentiation Logit Model," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 16(4), pages 329-370, November.
    11. Dnes, Antony & Garoupa, Nuno, 2005. "Externality and organizational choice in franchising," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 57(2), pages 139-149.
    12. Ralph A. Winter, 2009. "Presidential Address: Antitrust restrictions on single-firm strategies," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 42(4), pages 1207-1239, November.
    13. Kosová, Renáta & Lafontaine, Francine, 2012. "Much ado about chains: A research agenda," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 303-308.
    14. Arruñada Benito & Garicano Luis & Vázquez Luis, 2005. "Completing Contracts Ex Post: How Car Manufacturers Manage Car Dealers," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 1(1), pages 149-173, April.
    15. Arrunada, Benito & Garicano, Luis & Vazquez, Luis, 2001. "Contractual Allocation of Decision Rights and Incentives: The Case of Automobile Distribution," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 17(1), pages 257-284, April.
    16. Tongil “TI”Kim, 2021. "When Franchisee Service Affects Demand: An Application to the Car Radiator Market and Resale Price Maintenance," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 40(1), pages 101-121, January.
    17. Kaplow, Louis & Shapiro, Carl, 2007. "Antitrust," Handbook of Law and Economics, in: A. Mitchell Polinsky & Steven Shavell (ed.), Handbook of Law and Economics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 15, pages 1073-1225, Elsevier.
    18. Aamir Rafique Hashmi & Johannes Van Biesebroeck, 2016. "The Relationship between Market Structure and Innovation in Industry Equilibrium: A Case Study of the Global Automobile Industry," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 98(1), pages 192-208, March.
    19. Christopher Conlon & Julie Holland Mortimer, 2021. "Empirical properties of diversion ratios," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 52(4), pages 693-726, December.
    20. Cédric Argenton, 2010. "Exclusive Quality," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(3), pages 690-716, September.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:red:sed014:1177. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Christian Zimmermann (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sedddea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.