Essays on international distribution of manufactured products under possibility of parallel imports

The dissertation presents three essays on the international distribution mechanism of manufactured products in the presence of parallel imports. Parallel imports are genuine goods or services imported by a reseller into a country without the authorization of the owner of the intellectual property rights in that country.; The first chapter examines the equilibrium analysis in a model of multiple distributors, given the distribution mechanism. It shows that parallel imports between retail markets prevent a manufacturer from inducing maximum profit through a two-part tariff contract. Parallel imports can also cause an incentive problem for each distributor. Restricting parallel imports can increase joint social welfare, but it has a different impact on a large country and on a small country. The large country has a welfare gain, but the small country is hurt.; A manufacturer who has a license for a special product might have several distribution channels to serve foreign markets. The second chapter compares two of the most common distribution mechanisms, licensing and FDI (foreign direct investment) and it shows that a licensing scheme can be more favorable to the manufacturer than FDI scheme under certain circumstances. Furthermore, when the transportation cost is high, the manufacturer cannot increase the joint industry profit by following a sequential bargaining (backward stealing) strategy with a new distributor.; In the third chapter, I suggest optimal policies on parallel imports. The legal treatment of parallel imports varies widely across countries and stems from each jurisdiction's choice of territorial exhaustion of intellectual property rights. This chapter analyzes which policy system about parallel imports is the best from a global social planner's point of view and it shows that no banning of parallel imports is not always the best to maximize the global social welfare. It also shows why the developed country wants to block parallel imports even if it can hurt consumers of his country. Furthermore, it shows that a policy coordination of parallel imports inside free trade area such as EU might not increase the global social welfare when there is a big difference in terms of the market size.