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Abstract
Suppose that a representative downstream firm must buy relationship-specific capital before an upstream monopolist is privately informed of its unit costs. We show that the upstream firm will write a contract before the downstream firm invests, specifying a maximum (list) price which may be discounted when costs are low. This model therefore rationalizes transactions/list pricing: a prevalent mode of inter-firm trading. We use our results to explain Stigler and Kindahl's findings on medium-term price dynamics.