Minimum Resale Price Maintenance and Concentrated Markets

This paper reviews a recent strand of the literature on vertical restraints, that has focused on the anti-competitive effects of minimum (and fixed) resale price maintenance in settings with both inter- and intra-brand competition. In particular, we identify a set of situations with “interlocking relationships” (i.e. where manufacturers share common retailers) where RPM may be used to maintain retail prices at the monopoly level. We also discuss recent empirical studies that support the theoretical findings.