This article is based on a paper I’ve just had published in the Journal of Competition Law and Economics, available here.

Resale Price Maintenance (RPM) is an agreement between manufacturers and retailers, whereby manufacturers only supply retailers with their output, if the retailer agrees to sell the products at a specified price. There are a number of valid reasons why manufacturers and retailers would agree to such a restriction on behaviour. One example is that manufacturers might want to encourage retailers to offer promotional services, or help showcase the product (for example, offering test drives of cars, making nice stands to draw customers’ attention to the latest book, providing walk-throughs of the technical specifications of different laptops, etc). [...]