The raising rivals’ costs theory predicts that a vertical merger will create an incentive for the vertically integrated firm to increase input prices to downstream rivals. A simple formula exists to estimate the magnitude of this input price increase. This formula has played a central role in the regulatory evaluation of a number of important recent vertical mergers and is likely to continue to play an important role in the regulatory evaluation of future vertical mergers. The formula requires an estimate of the upstream pass-through rate. Calculation of the upstream pass-through rate is complicated by the fact that prices in many upstream markets are determined by bilateral negotiations, where bargaining power is split between both sides of the market. Thus the manner in which the division of bargaining power affects the upstream pass-through rate must be taken into account. This paper shows that the existing formula for estimating the upstream pass-through rate has some deficiencies and suggests two new formulas for estimating it—depending on the timing of the upstream and downstream pricing decisions.

提高竞争对手成本理论预测，纵向合并将激励纵向整合的公司提高对下游竞争对手的投入价格。存在一个简单的公式来估计这种投入价格上涨的幅度。该公式在近期一些重要的纵向并购的监管评估中发挥了核心作用，并有可能在未来纵向并购的监管评估中继续发挥重要作用。该公式需要对上游通过率的估计。由于许多上游市场的价格是由双边谈判决定的，其中议价能力在市场双方之间分配，因此上游传递率的计算变得复杂。因此必须考虑议价能力的划分对上游通过率的影响。本文表明，现有的估算上游传递率的公式存在一些缺陷，并提出了两个新的估算公式——取决于上下游定价决策的时间。