Make and Buy: Outsourcing, Vertical Integration, and Cost Reduction
研究了全球化背景下企业外包与垂直整合的权衡，发现上游市场竞争加剧时，垂直整合对供应商投资的抑制效应可能超过其避免加价的好处。
Globalization reshaped supply chains and the boundaries of firms in favor of outsourcing. Now, even vertically integrated firms procure substantially from external suppliers. To study procurement and the structure of firms in this reshaped economy, we analyze a model in which integration grants a downstream customer the option to source internally. Integration is advantageous because it allows the customer to avoid paying markups sometimes, but disadvantageous because it discourages investments in cost reduction by independent suppliers. The investment-discouragement effect more likely outweighs the markup-avoidance effect if the upstream market is more competitive, as is so in a more global economy.