Anti-trust Study On Vertical Restraints Of Price Of Books

The12th Five-year Plan of Development and Reform of Culture Industry hasbeen issued on February16，2012，which indicates the destination and direction ofdevelopment of culture industries. The Plan requires that it is necessary to improvethe system of modern culture market，accelerate development of various cultureproducts and major market，break fragmented market，regional blockades andurban-rural separation in order to build a unified，open and orderly competitivemodern cultural market and promote reasonable flow of cultural products andelements within China. A book is not only classified as a commodity，but also animportant spiritual cultural product. And publishment of books involves botheconomic and social benefits，and it also promote development of culture，education，technology and other industries of a nation. Lately，price battle between Dangdangand360buy becomes more and more fierce，and price restraint by publishing industryassociations becomes more and more common，which interferes normal order ofcompetition and price adjustment and may leads to potential crisis of the industry.Therefore，comprehensively analyze our pricing system of books and competition ofpublishing industry based on anti-trust theories of vertical restraint，as well as studyforeign anti-trust rules with respect to price of books，may discover material causes ofdisorder competition of publishing industry，figure out practical anti-trust rules toregulate it in order to promote free competition and develop a healthy and orderly market of books.The thesis contains four parts. The first part clarifies basic theories of verticalrestraint，including vertical restraint of competition，resale price maintenance andresale price maintenance of books. The second part introduces foreign anti-trustsystems and rules governing price of books，which focuses on system of net price，exemption of resale price maintenance of books and role of associations of publishingindustry. The third part analyzes behavior of price restraint of books case by case，which discloses anti-trust problems of price battle among online bookstores，Rule ofTrading Books and price of textbooks. The fourth part studies China’s pricing systemof books and anti-trust rules governing price of books，and proposes suggestions toimprove application of these rules in the field of price of books，with the goal to leadprice of books to an orderly competitive road and promote healthy development ofbooks’ market.