Structural Empirical Analysis of Contracting in Vertical Markets

This chapter presents an overview of advances in the structural analysis of contracting in vertical markets over the past fifteen years. We provide a discussion of theoretical models of contracting and bargaining that form the basis of recent empirical work, and then present common approaches used by researchers to take these models to the data. We also briefly survey the structural empirical literature on topics in vertical markets (including horizontal and vertical mergers, price discrimination, and nonlinear and exclusionary contracts), and conclude with a discussion of potential topics for future research.