Essays On Vertical Restraints And Competition Policy PDF Download

Vertical restraints between firms, such as exclusive dealing contracts that forbid a dealer from promoting other manufacturers' products, are controversial in competition policy because of their potential anticompetitive effects. This dissertation addresses three issues in competition policy and vertical relationships between firms: (1) what are the effects of exclusive dealing on competitiveness of brands? (2) does exclusive dealing foreclose new entrants out of a market? (3) what is the effect of retail competition on market price in a vertically integrated industry when upstream firms face capacity constraints? Chapter 1 examines the impact of allowing more brands access to exclusive distribution networks on brand and market level outcomes. In the U.S., Anheuser Busch is the dominant firm in the beer industry and has exclusive dealing arrangements with many of its distributors. I looked at a recent beer distribution deal between Anheuser Busch and InBev that moved InBev brands into Anheuser Busch distribution networks. I collected beer distributor data before and after the event and matched them with a panel scanner dataset from a major grocery chain in Northern California. Using a difference-in-differences approach, I compared the changes in InBev market shares in markets in which InBev switched to Anheuser Busch distributors, to the changes in market shares in markets in which InBev switched to Anheuser Busch exclusive distributors. The results suggest that exclusive dealing matters in the beer industry: I find InBev market shares to be higher once allowed access to Anheuser Busch exclusive distribution networks. In addition, I do not find overall market quantity to be larger when more brands have access to Anheuser Busch exclusive networks. Instead, the results show cannibalization effects on existing brands' market share when a distributor acquires more brands. These results are more consistent with an incentive-based explanation for firms preferring exclusive contracts. Chapter 2 examines the effect of exclusive dealing on rival firms' entry decisions. I estimated an entry model of specialty beer producers in Northern California and tested whether exclusive dealing raises a firm's fixed costs. I modeled each firm's entry decision as a static entry game of incomplete information that allows for strategic interactions and employed a new panel scanner dataset from a major grocery chain in Northern California. Given that both firm and location profitability are heterogeneous, I controlled for post-entry demand conditions by estimating the demand for beer using a discrete choice model. Using the demand estimates and the predicted entry probabilities, I recovered a firm's fixed costs using a two-step estimator. I find some spillover effects on specialty beer producers' entry decisions. After taking strategic interactions into account, the results indicate that a firm has higher fixed costs at locations with exclusive distributors. The estimates also show that a firm is less likely to enter a location that is farther from its brewery, has lower expected demand or is smaller in store size. Finally, I implemented counter-factual experiments to study the effect of banning exclusive dealing. The results show that the welfare improvement associated with banning exclusive contracts is very small. Chapter 3 (joint with Christopher R. Knittel) considers a model of oligopolistic competition when upstream firms face capacity constraints. We studied the optimality conditions of upstream firms under vertical separation and vertical integration when firms compete on quantity. We illustrated the properties of the equilibrium wholesale and retail prices when the downstream market becomes less competitive with a numerical example. Using data on gasoline demand and refineries' capacity levels in California, we generated equilibrium wholesale and retail prices when the number of downstream firms varies. We find that whether a higher degree of retail market concentration results in higher retail price depends on market structure and the effectiveness of the capacity constraints. When independent refineries' capacity constraints are binding, the effect of a decrease in the number of independent retailers on retail gasoline price is very small.