Resale Price Maintenance and Consumer Search

Résumé

We provide a novel pro-competitive rationale for resale price maintenance (RPM). We consider a model where some consumers are fully informed about downstream prices while other consumers are not. When an upstream manufacturer imposes a floor on downstream prices, this qualitatively changes downstream competition— influencing not just the level, but also the dispersion, of prices. The manufacturer optimally imposes a price floor which just eliminates all downstream price dispersion, and this leads to both higher (aggregate) consumer surplus and higher total welfare as compared to the case without RPM.

Mots-clés

Référence

Andrew Rhodes et Yang Yang, « Resale Price Maintenance and Consumer Search », TSE Working Paper, n° 25-1695, novembre 2025.