In this memo, Matthew Bennett discusses the recent interest by competition authorities in vertical communications between manufacturers and retailers, and explains the dangers of conflating Recommended Retail Prices, which are relatively common and pro-competitive, with Retail Price Maintenance, which is treated as a hard-core competition law infringement in Europe.
“Suite dreams”: Market definition and complementarity in the digital age
Certain products exhibit such strong complementarities that they should not be evaluated separately. For example, consider a pair of shoes or the various...