Anti-Competitive Effects of resale-Below-Cost Laws
Résumé
We show that resale-below-cost laws enable producers to impose industry-wide price-floors to retailers. This mechanism suppresses downstream competition but also and more surprisingly dampens upstream competition, leading to higher prices and lower welfare. Price-floor may be more profitable for producers than resale price maintenance contracts and, when a resale price maintenance restraint may have ambiguous effect on welfare, price-floors are always welfare damaging. Retailers' buyer power appears as a key for a price-floor to work out.
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