2014 Reports

Tomorrow’s Antitrust Rulings on Conditional Pricing: How the Latest Economic Research May Show the Way

Asker, John W.; Akkus-Clemens, Selvin

It is important to distinguish our focus from contracts that explicitly condition on the price of rivals. A good example of this is the most-favored-customer (MFC) agreement. With an MFC agreement, a seller guarantees to match the lowest price a buyer can get from any of the seller’s rivals. By contrast, our focus is on contracts that provide a buyer with price discounts conditional on the level of that buyer’s own purchases.