Competitive Effects of Resale Price Maintenance Through Inventory: Evidence from Publishing Industry

Kohei Kawaguchi, Jeff Qiu and Yi Zhang
Additional contact information
Jeff Qiu: U.S. Department of Justice

No 202205, EAG Discussions Papers from Department of Justice, Antitrust Division

Abstract: This paper examines the competitive effects of resale price maintenance (RPM) through inventory decisions under demand uncertainty. We focus on the Japanese publishing industry where RPM is allowed. We develop and estimate a model of RPM in which price and inventory are determined before demand is realized. Counterfactual simulations show that the RPM model would yield a higher consumer surplus than a wholesale model due to a sufficient inventory and a lower price of new titles. Moreover, we show that the price ceiling due to RPM plays a welfare-enhancing role, whereas the price floor is irrelevant in the industry.

Pages: 62 pages
Date: 2022-12
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.justice.gov/atr/competitive-effects-re ... -publishing-industry (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:doj:eagpap:202205

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in EAG Discussions Papers from Department of Justice, Antitrust Division Department of Justice Antitrust Division 450 Fifth Street NW Washington, DC 20530. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tung Vu ().