Giorgio Zanarone  

Profesor de Economía de la Empresa en CUNEF. Ha cumplido sus estudios doctorales en la Universidad Pompeu Fabra de Barcelona, donde recibió su doctorado en Economía, Finanzas y Empresa en 2008, y en el Massachussets Institute of Technology, donde ha sido visitante de 2005 a 2008. Sus intereses principales son el análisis teórico y empírico de los contratos, la organización interna de la empresa, y los límites de la empresa. Ha publicado en el Journal of Law & Economics y en Managerial & Decision Economics.

Vertical Restraints and the Law: Evidence from Automobile Franchising

Abstract

After a 2002 European Commission regulation prohibited the use of dealerexclusive territories, automobile franchise contracts in Italy introduced price ceilings and standards on verifiable marketing and service inputs, such as advertising and salespeople. The contracts also imposed quantity floors, a practice already in use before the regulatory change. The introduction of standards suggests that, consistent with a view of vertical restraints as coordination mechanisms, manufacturers used exclusive territories to induce desired dealer services, and, once the use of exclusive territories was prohibited, they switched to alternative contractual devices to achieve this goal. The introduction of price ceilings despite free intrabrand competition also suggests that car manufacturers tried to prevent some dealers from gaming the quantity floors by selling to other dealers’ customers while charging monopolistic prices at their own locations.

" 1. Introduction 

Several works have studied vertical restraints as mechanisms for coordinating  the prices and service decisions of independent dealers.1 According to early  models, restraints on intrabrand competition, such as exclusive territories and  resale price maintenance, prevent dealers from free riding on each other’s presale  services, such as attention to the customer, local advertising, and quality certification.  In combination with quantity floors or nonlinear pricing, to avoid  double marginalization, these restraints give dealers the incentives to efficiently  choose prices and service efforts (Telser 1960, 1990; Marvel and McCafferty ... "

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