Competition of Intermediaries in a Differentiated Duopoly

Abstract

On an intermediate goods market with asymmetric production technologies as well as vertical and horizontal product differentiation, we analyze the influence of simultaneous competition for resources and customers. The intermediaries face either price or quantity competition on the output market and a monopolistic, strategically acting supplier on the input market. We find that there exist quality and productivity differences such that for quantity competition only one intermediary is willing to procure inputs from the input supplier, while for price competition both intermediaries are willing to purchase inputs. Moreover, the well-known welfare advantage of price competition can in general be no longer confirmed in our model with an endogenous input market and asymmetric intermediaries.