The law and economics of de facto exclusive dealing

摘要

Firms employ numerous membership and loyalty policies to persuade customers to purchase exclusively from them. These membership and loyalty policies can take the form of volume discounts, bundled pricing, cash back, or dividends which are either conditioned on the purchase of memberships or on the total volume purchased. When such membership and loyalty policies are enacted by firms in a competitive market, the procompetitive benefits are clear. However, when these policies are enacted by a monopolist the effects can be pernicious because membership and loyalty policies create de facto exclusive arrangements. Monopolists can thus use these policies to foreclose a market to new entrants or to drive out small competitors. Despite the potential anticompetitive effect of these policies, it is unclear whether the antitrust laws should prosecute policies such as these and if so whether the courts would find them unlawful. The boundary that separates legitimate from unlawful monopoly behavior is a fuzzy, shifting line and remains among the most highly contested issues in antitrust law today.