Vertical Mergers in Ecosystems with Consumer Hold‐Up*
研究了上游垄断企业通过纵向合并下游企业来缓解消费者套牢问题、增加生态系统需求的现象，发现即使下游产品同质，合并后继续服务竞争对手仍有利可图。
An ecosystem comprises all downstream products that employ a certain upstream input. In many cases, final consumers make irreversible investments to join an ecosystem before downstream prices are set. By committing to buy products that use the specific ecosystem input, they are at risk of being held‐up. Unable to observe future prices, consumers base their decisions on what they observe about the market structure within each ecosystem, including vertical contracts signed by the upstream firms. By entering into vertical agreements with multiple competing downstream firms, thus creating a credible expectation of lower prices, an upstream firm is able to mitigate consumers' hold‐up problem and, as a result, increase ecosystem demand. Our main observation is that, in contrast to conventional wisdom, an upstream monopolist merging with one of its downstream affiliates will find it profitable to continue to serve downstream competitors, even when products sold downstream are homogeneous.