Vertical Restraints and the Law: Evidence from Automobile Franchising
研究2002年欧盟禁止经销商独家区域后，意大利汽车特许经营合同如何转向价格上限、服务标准和数量下限等替代机制，揭示纵向限制作为协调工具的作用。
After a 2002 European Commission regulation prohibited the use of dealer‐exclusive territories, automobile franchise contracts in Italy introduced price ceilings and standards on verifiable marketing and service inputs, such as advertising and salespeople. The contracts also imposed quantity floors, a practice already in use before the regulatory change. The introduction of standards suggests that, consistent with a view of vertical restraints as coordination mechanisms, manufacturers used exclusive territories to induce desired dealer services, and, once the use of exclusive territories was prohibited, they switched to alternative contractual devices to achieve this goal. The introduction of price ceilings despite free intrabrand competition also suggests that car manufacturers tried to prevent some dealers from gaming the quantity floors by selling to other dealers’ customers while charging monopolistic prices at their own locations.