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According to Hu et al. [Journal of Industrial Economics, 70(3), pp. 775–789], downstream cross‐holdings are permissible based on the social welfare standard if the investment technology in the upstream sector is highly inefficient. However, the conclusion of that paper relies on a definition of downstream producer surplus that is not so commonly found in the literature. After using a more commonly found definition of downstream producer surplus, this note demonstrates that downstream cross‐holdings have detrimental impacts on both consumer surplus and social welfare, emphasizing the need for efficient and effective regulations on downstream cross‐holdings in Hu et al. [Journal of Industrial Economics, 70(3), pp. 775–789] type economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper revisits how private cross-ownership affects cost-reducing R&D, production quantities, consumer surplus, firms' profits and social welfare in a mixed oligopoly with a convex cost function. We show that increasing cross-ownership reduces private firms' R&D but increases the semi-public firm's R&D. Further, both consumer surplus and social welfare could be enhanced through cross-ownership when the convexity of cost function is small. However, increasing cross-ownership could hurt consumers and social welfare when the convexity of cost function is large. Our finding highlights that the convexity of cost function is very important to the welfare implications of cross-ownership. Hence, antitrust authorities should be more careful when assessing the welfare effects of partial ownership in different industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate how common ownership affects welfare in a vertically related market. Although common ownership mitigates the double marginalization problem and improves welfare, it restricts competition among downstream firms and harms welfare. We find that whether common ownership is welfare‐improving depends on the degree of competitiveness in the downstream market. Common ownership is more likely to improve welfare when there are fewer downstream firms and a greater degree of product differentiation. In other words, common ownership may improve welfare when competition in the downstream market is weak. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study attempts to investigate the impact of downstream foreign licensing on upstream privatization policy in a vertically related market, in which a public firm and a domestic private firm supply exclusively to downstream domestic and foreign firms, respectively. We show that downstream licensing occurs when the cost differential between downstream duopolists is small, and the optimal strategy under licensing is upstream partial privatization. In addition, downstream foreign licensing facilitates upstream privatization. We further show that downstream licensing improves (reduces) local welfare when the cost differential is large (small). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study social efficiency of entry in the presence of downstream cost asymmetry and upstream price discrimination. We show that entry is excessive when the entrants are highly inefficient, and it is insufficient when either the entrants are efficient or their inefficiency is low. The results are in sharp contrast to the existing literature considering upstream uniform pricing (Cao, H., and L. F. S. Wang. 2020. "Social Efficiency of Entry in a Vertically Related Industry Revisited." Economics Letters 129. Art. no. 109200), as discriminatory pricing alters the relative strengths of the business-stealing, business-creation and production-(in)efficiency effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing studies on partial ownership usually overlook the effects of vertically related markets. Our paper highlights the importance of the upstream market on downstream firms' incentives to acquire partial ownership and the consequent welfare implications. In the main model, we assume that there are three firms in the downstream market, two of which may form a partial ownership arrangement. We find several results that are in contrast to those in the literature. First, the two firms will engage in partial ownership if the upstream market is an oligopoly (triopoly or duopoly). Second, partial ownership may raise total production, consumer surplus, and social welfare. This happens when the upstream market consists of a duopoly and the two firms involved in partial ownership are supplied by different suppliers. Third, the outsider, commonly known as a free rider in the literature, may become a victim of partial ownership. Our results are robust to several extensions, including a general n $n$‐firm framework, product differentiation, and uniform pricing by upstream firms. We also provide the conditions under which the curvature of the demand function and the convexity of the cost function motivate firms to form partial ownership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We show that bilateral cross-holding can be profitable for firms with symmetric technologies in a Stackelberg oligopoly. Furthermore, if firms involved in cross-holding obtain a strategic advantage to be the leaders (i.e. Stackelberg leadership through cross-holding), such cross-holding will improve both consumer surplus and social welfare. We also discuss robustness of our main results with respect to convex costs and product differentiation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When a retailer launches a new product, the lack of information on market size and consumer valuation lead to yield uncertainty for the retailer concerning demand and therefore lead to risks in production. Under advance selling, the pre‐orders may signal the future demand for the retailer, which helps to reduce demand uncertainty. This paper studies the retailer's optimal advance selling price and production quantity in a two‐period model where the demand uncertainty comes from both the market size and the distribution of consumer valuations. We characterize the conditions under which the retailer adopts advance selling and perform comparative statics analysis of the equilibrium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]