Insurers subcontract with pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) to administer drug insurance. PBMs typically profit from the difference between a fixed amount and the reimbursement paid to pharmacies (i.e., "spread pricing"). Some states require insurers and PBMs to use cost-plus contracts, in which...

We analyze health care option demand markets with vertical restraints divided along two dimensions: naked and conditional exclusion, and vertical integration; applicable to the upstream, the downstream, and both markets. Our unified framework includes forward and backward integration, and joint...

This article examines a model of competition between two types of health insurer: Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) and nonintegrated insurers. HMOs vertically integrate health care providers and pay them at a competitive price, while nonintegrated health insurers work as indemnity plans...

This paper provides an economic analysis of recent vertical and horizontal mergers in the U.S. industry for audiovisual media content, including the AT&T-Time Warner and the Disney-Fox mergers. Using a theory-driven approach, we examine economic effects of these types of mergers on market...

Economic theory provides various explanations for vertical integration but transaction costs seem to be a major determinant of backward, forward and lateral integration. The paper studies integration trends in the newly emerging Bulgarian pharmaceutical sector, seeking transaction cost...

Titanic-scale multistate generic pricing antitrust litigation has been underway since December 2016, involving increasingly a myriad of generic drug manufacturers and drugs. Forty-seven states allege a pricing conspiracy wherein twenty defendants participated in a multitude of specific...

Bargaining is all around us. Bargaining is how prices are set across a range of economic activities such as between licensors and licensees of intellectual property, employees and employers, content providers and distributors, health insurers and hospitals, and in many intermediate product...

Titanic-scale multistate generic pricing antitrust litigation has been underway since December 2016, increasingly involving a myriad of generic drug manufacturers and drugs. Forty-seven states allege a pricing conspiracy wherein twenty defendants participated in a multitude of specific...

Conventional wisdom presumes that a supplier in a monopolistic market, or in an oligopolistic market that is not perfectly competitive, has the power to charge a supra-competitive wholesale price. In contrast, elaborating on recent economics studies, this Article shows that the supplier of an...

Low prices are one of antitrust law's traditional promises to society. Resale price maintenance (RPM), the practice whereby a manufacturer sets pricing rules for retailers, artificially inflates prices and, thus, allegedly runs afoul of antitrust laws. The practice emerged in the last quarter of...