Flawed Economic Models Have Misled RPM Policy: Changes in Canada, Europe and the United States

详细信息    查看全文

• 作者：Tarcisio da Graça ; Robert Masson
• 关键词：Resale price maintenance ; Consumer surplus ; Welfare effects ; Antitrust
• 刊名：Review of Industrial Organization
• 出版年：2017
• 出版时间：March 2017
• 年：2017
• 卷：50
• 期：2
• 页码：181-207
• 全文大小：
• 刊物类别：Business and Economics
• 刊物主题：Industrial Organization; Microeconomics;
• 出版者：Springer US
• ISSN：1573-7160
• 卷排序：50

文摘

Some of the influential literature that supports the resale price maintenance efficiency view is flawed when it relies on presale services that do not modify the value-in-use of a good. Crucially, we consider that value-in-use may differ from prepurchase perceived value. We apply the value-in-use standard, which exposes the loss in consumer surplus in Bork’s model and reveals that even Bork’s dissenters significantly underestimate their calculated losses to inframarginal consumers. When consumer surplus is the antitrust/competition policy standard, our results suggest that a rule-of-reason regime where authorities or agencies bear the burden of proof can be unfavourable to consumers.