Vertical integration in an environment without foreclosure, or more generally without any mechanisms that restrict competition among firms, and subsidization of firms' production are two separate mechanisms that raise consumer welfare, and both have been proposed as antidotes to certain aspects...

It is widely believed that vertical integration in an environment without foreclosure, or more generally without any mechanism that restricts competition among firms, raises the welfare of consumers. In this paper we show that this can be overturned in a standard setting. We consider a vertical...