Vertical Foreclosure with Product Choice and Allocation : Evidence from the Movie Industry

We investigate a vertically integrated theater's contract and screen allocation decisions in a movie industry characterized by demand uncertainty, price uniformity, and revenue-sharing contracts. Based on a simple theoretical model that describes the decisions of theaters and movie distributors, we derive two mechanisms of foreclosure behavior, termed the selection and allocation effects herein. Our empirical results suggest that integrated theaters not only impose a higher quality standard for movies from independent distributors but also play their affiliated movies more. Further, the magnitude of the foreclosure effects varies by movie quality