Do Vertical Mergers Facilitate Upstream Collusion?

Authors: Nocke, Volker; White, Lucy

Source: The American Economic Review, Volume 97, Number 4, September 2007 , pp. 1321-1339(19)

Publisher: American Economic Association

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Abstract:

We investigate the impact of vertical mergers on upstream firms' ability to collude when selling to downstream firms in a repeated game. We show that vertical mergers give rise to an outlets effect: the deviation profits of cheating unintegrated firms are reduced as these firms can no longer profitably sell to the downstream affiliates of their integrated rivals. Vertical mergers also result in an opposing punishment effect: integrated firms typically make more profit in the punishment phase than unintegrated upstream firms. The net result of these effects in an unintegrated industry is to facilitate upstream collusion. We provide conditions under which further vertical integration also facilitates collusion.

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1257/000282807783286676

Publication date: 2007-09-01

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The American Economic Review is a general-interest economics journal. The journal is published quarterly and contains articles on a broad range of topics. Established in 1911, the AER is among the nation's oldest and most respected scholarly journals in the economics profession.
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