Cementing Relationships: Vertical Integration, Foreclosure, Productivity, and Prices
利用水泥和预拌混凝土工厂的长期数据，检验纵向一体化是否导致市场排挤。结果发现排挤效应不显著，反而价格下降、产量上升，高生产率企业更倾向一体化，其优势源于本地混凝土运营的物流协调改善。
This paper empirically investigates the possible market power effects of vertical integration proposed in the theoretical literature on vertical foreclosure. It uses a rich data set of cement and ready-mixed concrete plants that spans several decades to perform a detailed case study. There is little evidence that foreclosure is quantitatively important in these industries. Instead, prices fall, quantities rise, and entry rates remain unchanged when markets become more integrated. These patterns are consistent, however, with an alternative efficiency-based mechanism. Namely, higher-productivity producers are more likely to vertically integrate and are also larger, more likely to survive, and more likely to charge lower prices. We find evidence that integrated producers’ productivity advantage is tied to improved logistics coordination afforded by large local concrete operations. Interestingly, this benefit is not due to firms’ vertical structures per se: nonvertical firms with large local concrete operations have similarly high productivity levels.