自2007年iPhone上市以来，苹果公司多年采取的销售渠道是与AT&T签订的专售协议。该做法受到了媒体和消费者的广泛批评。本文作者研究了这一专售协议对消费者是否造成了损害。作者使用移动电话销售数据估计了消费者对手机和网咯运营商的联合需求函数。作者然后假定手机生产商和网咯运营商进行“领先追随”式的博弈，并基于需求函数估计了供给函数。作者以此供求系统为基础模拟了在没有专售协议下的市场供求均衡。作者的结论是专售协议造成了3.26 亿美元的消费者损失。 发表于Customer Needs and Solutions, 2015。
简介： "Since the Apple iPhone’s launch in 2007 in an exclusive arrangement with AT&T, it has garnered overwhelmingly positive responses from consumers and from the media. With its success, exclusive contracts between handset makers and wireless carriers have come under increasing scrutiny by regulators and lawmakers. Such practices have been criticized by regulators, by the media, and by “locked-out” consumers, due to the fact that a consumer has to subscribe to a particular service provider if he or she strongly prefers one handset to others. In this paper, we empirically examine the impact of handset exclusivity arrangements on consumer welfare. First we study consumers’ purchase decisions for mobile services that include the choice of a handset and of a service provider. We do so by combining panel data on consumers’ purchase decisions with supplemented data on prices and features of common handsets. Next, assuming a Stackelberg leader-follower relationship between the handset manufacturers and the service providers, and using our demand estimates, we recover the markups for the players in the market. We then simulate what would have happened in the counterfactual scenario when the iPhone is available from all carriers. Our results suggest that, if we take into account adjustments in handset prices from handset manufacturers and service providers in response to the change in market structure, consumer welfare will increase by $326 million without the exclusive arrangement. We view our analysis as a starting point to a more complete characterization of consumer behavior and the complex relationships among players in this industry."
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