Resale Price Maintenance: An Economic Assessment of the Federal Trade Commission's Case against the Corning Glass Works
利用联邦贸易委员会诉康宁玻璃厂案的实证证据，检验了转售价格维持（RPM）的三种经济理论，发现反竞争理论被否定，而委托代理理论得到支持，即RPM帮助增加了康宁产品的销售。
This article examines the economic explanations for the use of resale price maintenance (RPM) by the Corning Glass Works, using empirical evidence developed from the Federal Trade Commission's case challenging the practice. Three classes of RPM theories are tested: the supplier and dealer anticompetitive theories, and the class of principle-agent theories. The article uses both ex ante and ex post tests to distinguish the theories, including tests based on structural evidence, as well as data on sales, advertising, and stock market reactions for the company and its competitors around critical events in the case. The evidence most convincingly rejects the anticompetitive theories and points toward a principle-agent explanation in which RPM helped increase sales of Corning's products. The case is of interest, in part, because the "simple" products at issue in the case are not the types of products most often associated with potential efficiency explanations for RPM.