Vertical Separation as a Defense against Strong Suppliers

We provide a simple model to investigate decisions about vertical separation. The key feature of this model is that more than one input is required for the final product of the downstream monopolist. We show that as the bargaining powers of independent complementary input suppliers grow larger, the downstream monopolist tends to separate from its input units. The results are related to a visible difference between the vertical structures of Japanese and US auto assemblers

Strategic Supply Function Competition with Private Information

A Bayesian supply function equilibrium is characterized in a market where firms have private information about their uncertain costs. It is found that with supply function competition, and in contrast to Bayesian Cournot competition, competitiveness is affected by the parameters of the information structure: supply functions are steeper with more noise in the private signals or more correlation among the costs parameters. In fact, for large values of noise or correlation supply functions are downward sloping, margins are larger than the Cournot ones, and as we approach the common value case they tend to the collusive level. Furthermore, competition in supply functions aggregates the dispersed information of firms (the equilibrium is privately revealing) while Cournot competition does not. The implication is that with the former the only source of deadweight loss is market power while with the latter we have to add private information. As the market grows large the equilibrium becomes competitive and we obtain an approximation to how many competitors are needed to have a certain degree of competitiveness

Market Size and Vertical Structure in the Railway Industry

We provide a theoretical framework to discuss the relation between market size and vertical structure in the railway industry. The framework is based on a simple downstream monopoly model with two input suppliers, labor forces and the rail infrastructure firm. The operation of the downstream firm (i.e., the train operating firm) generates costs on the rail infrastructure firm. We show that the downstream firm with a larger market size is more likely to integrate with the rail infrastructure firm. This is consistent with the phenomenon in the railway industry

Programming and advertising competition in the broadcasting industry

We analyze competition between two private television channels that derive their profits from advertising receipts. These profits are shown to be proportional to total population advertising attendance. The channels play a sequential game in which they first select their profiles (program mixes) and then their advertising ratios. We show that these ratios play the same role as prices in usual horizontal differentiation models. We prove that whenever ads' interruptions are costly for viewers the program mixes of the channels never converge but that the niche strategies are less effective and that the channel "profiles" are closer as advertising aversion becomes stronger