Naked exclusion : Towards a behavioral approach to exclusive dealing ∗ Jan Boone †

We report experimental results on exclusive dealing inspired by the literature on naked exclusion. Our key ndings are: First, exclusion of a more e cient entrant is a widespread phenomenon in lab markets. Second, allowing incumbents to discriminate between buyers increases exclusion rates compared to the non-discriminatory case only when payments to buyers can be o ered sequentially and secretly. Third, allowing discrimination does not lead to signi cant decreases in costs of exclusion. Accounting for the observation that buyers are more likely to accept an exclusive deal the higher is the payment, substantially improves the t between theoretical predictions and observed behavior.