Demand Uncertainty and Price Maintenance: Markdowns as Destructive Competition
提出一种破坏性竞争的新理论，比较了最低转售价格维持与零售市场出清在垄断制造商和竞争零售商模型中的效果，发现转售价格维持下制造商利润和均衡库存更高，消费者剩余也可能更高。
This paper offers a new theory of destructive competition. The authors compare minimum resale price maintenance to retail market-clearing in a model with a monopolistic manufacturer selling to competitive retailers. In both the resale price maintenance and flexible-price games, retailers must order inventories before the realization of demand uncertainty. The authors find that manufacturer profits and equilibrium inventories are higher under resale price maintenance than under market-clearing. Surprisingly, consumer surplus can also be higher, in which case unfettered retail competition can legitimately be called 'destructive.' Copyright 1997 by American Economic Association.