The Cooperative Specific Investments and the Evolution of the Law of Vertical Restraints

Журнал институциональных исследований

Maria E. Agamirova¹  Nataliya B. Dzagurova¹ 

[1] National Research University - Higher School of Economics;

关键词: antitrust;    cooperative relation-specific investments;    vertical restraints;    antitrust cases;   

DOI  :  10.17835/2076-6297.2018.10.4.112-124

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Since mid-seventies, the underinvestment in specific assets and the «hold-up» problem have been remaining a critical issue in new institutional economics. Till the very end of the twentieth-century theoretical analysis of «hold-up» problem was dedicated to consideration only of so-called «selfish» relation-specific investments which created an ex-post surplus for the investor. That means a seller invests in reducing his costs and a buyer invests to increase his benefits from the procured good or service. Another type of relation-specific investments called «cooperative» investments (or cross investments) attracted nearly no attention in the theory even though such investments were widespread in practice. By definition introduced by Che and Hausch in 1999, a distinctive feature of cooperative relation-specific investments is that they have a positive impact on the outside option of a trading partner, i.e., the outcome of terminating the contract at the ex-ante stage). An alternative approach to the classification of relation-specific investments (Dzagourova and Agamirova, 2014) relies on the direction of these effects in the external trade (i.e., trade with alternative partners). There is a widespread belief that theoretical analysis played a crucial role in the evolution of vertical restraints (VRs) regulation. In order to check whether this statement is “history friendly” or not the article compares the dates of the key US antitrust cases concerning the VRs and the new economic theories through the lens of incentives for cooperative specific investments. It helps to show that the intention to maintain these incentives was the important factor caused the courts’ decisions, which in turn inspired the subsequent developments of economic theory. Considering the vertical restrictions as an instrument of risk sharing especially when the partners’ specific investments are cooperative may open the new possibilities for further improvement of the regulatory framework governing the vertical agreements. Therefore, according to (Menard, 2018, p. 4) this paper combines issues related to the micro-analytical level and macro-level at the same time.

【 授权许可】

Unknown