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An essential input price that is 'too high' relative to the downstream price leads to inefficient foreclosure and one that is 'too low' induces the vertically-integrated firm to engage in non-price discrimination. Displacement ratios are used to derive the range of safe harbor (downstream/upstream) margin ratios within which no market exclusion arises in equilibrium. The range of admissible margin ratios is increasing in the degree of product differentiation and reduces to a single ratio in the limit as the products become homogeneous. A key policy finding is that complementary price-ceiling and price-floor constraints can prevent both forms of market exclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We show that sabotage may be particularly profitable for a vertically-integrated provider (VIP) when its downstream rival can devote effort to reducing its operating costs. Demand-reducing sabotage limits the return the rival anticipates from its cost management activities, and thereby inhibits those activities. The resulting higher costs for the rival increase the VIP's profit in settings where sabotage would not be profitable if the rival could not manage its operating costs. To limit sabotage by the VIP, the rival may find it profitable to intentionally diminish its ability to reduce its production costs. The diminished ability can produce Pareto gains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study an industry with a monopolistic bottleneck supplying an essential input to several downstream firms. Under legal unbundling the bottleneck must be operated by a legally independent upstream firm, which may be partly or fully owned by an incumbent active in downstream markets. Access prices are regulated but the upstream firm can perform non-tariff discrimination. Under perfect legal unbundling the upstream firm maximizes only own profits; with imperfections it is biased and to some extent accounts also for the incumbent's downstream profits. We show that increasing the incumbent's ownership share increases total output if the upstream firm's bias is sufficiently small, while otherwise effects are ambiguous. Stronger regulation that reduces the bias without changing ownership shares generally increases total output. We also endogenize the bias and show that it can depend non-monotonically on the ownership share. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We show that the incentives of a vertically integrated supplier to “sabotage” the activities of downstream rivals can vary with both the type of sabotage and the nature of downstream competition. Cost-increasing sabotage is typically profitable under both Cournot and Bertrand competition. In contrast, demand-reducing sabotage is often profitable under Cournot competition, but unprofitable under Bertrand competition. Incentives for sabotage can vary non-monotonically with the degree of product differentiation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze the incentives of a vertically-integrated producer (VIP) to engage in “self-sabotage”.Self-sabotage occurs when a VIP intentionally increases its upstream costs and/or reduces the quality of its upstream product. We identify conditions under which self-sabotage is profitable for the VIP even though it raises symmetrically the cost of the upstream product to all downstream producers and/or reduces symmetrically the quality of all downstream products. Under specified conditions, self-sabotage can enable a VIP to disadvantage downstream rivals differentially without violating parity requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]