Favoritism in Vertical Relationship: Input Prices and Access Quality

Ngo Long and Antoine Soubeyran

CIRANO Working Papers from CIRANO

Abstract: Favoritism in vertical relationship is a situation in which an upstream firm sets favorable exchange conditions to some agents at the expense of others. This paper explores the reason for, and direction of, favoritism in the vertical relationship between an upstream firm and a number of downstream firms that are Cournot rivals relying on the inputs provided by the upstream firm. We show that favoritism may arise from profit maximization. We address the following questions: (i) if the upstream firm can charge different prices to different downstream firms, will it treat the less efficient firms more favorably? (ii) if the upstream firm can provide different levels of quality of access to several ex ante identical downstream firms, will it provide a uniform quality of access? We show that the answer to (i) depends on whether downstream firms can self-supply, and we characterize the structure of favors. As for (ii), we show that among ex-ante equal firms, some firms will be selected for favorable treatment. On étudie le favoritisme qui existe dans la relation verticale entre une firme à l'amont et plusieurs firmes à l'aval. On démontre que le favoritisme est le résultat de la maximisation de profit. On considère les questions suivantes. Premièrement, si la firme à l'amont peut fixer des prix différents pour le même produit qu'elle vend aux firmes à l'aval, est-ce qu'elle traite mieux les firmes qui sont moins efficaces? Deuxièmement, si la firme à l'amont peut offrir aux firmes à l'aval des niveaux de qualité d'accès à son réseau, est-ce que la qualité sera uniforme? La réponse à la première question dépend de l'aptitude de l'auto-provision des firmes à l'aval. Quant à la deuxième question, on montre que certaines firmes sont favorisées.

Keywords: Vertical Relationship; Input Pricing; Access Quality; Oligopoly; Relation verticale; le prix des inputs; la qualité d'accès; oligopole (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003-04-01
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cir:cirwor:2003s-14

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