Abstract
We consider a seller's ability to deter potential entrants by offering exclusive contracts to downstream buyers. Previous literature has shown that this can be a profitable strategy if there is a coordination failure on the part of the buyers or if the seller can make discriminatory “divide-and-conquer” offers. This literature assumes that all offers are public. We show that if buyers cannot observe each other's offers and have passive or wary out-of-equilibrium beliefs, the divide-and-conquer exclusion strategy fails. Equilibria in which the incumbent obtains exclusion due to a coordination failure, on the other hand, exist for all out-of-equilibrium beliefs. (JEL D43, D83, D86, L13, L22, L40)
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