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This chapter takes a critical look at the sociological notion of ‘medicalisation’ in relation to recent trends and developments in neuroscience, neurotechnology and society, taking memory, medicine and the brain as our prime focus and the disease category of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) as our empirical case study. Five relational nexuses in particular are identified as relevant to these developments and debates, namely the bio-psych nexus, the pharma-psych nexus, the selves-subjectivity nexus, the wellness-enhancement nexus, and the neuroculture-neurofuture nexus. We show that developments in memory medicine and the shifting boundaries of cognitive health, as embodied and expressed in the case of MCI, shed further valuable light on these issues and the interconnectivity of these relational nexuses. As an emergent disease and susceptibility category, MCI illuminates not only the fuzzy boundaries between normal and abnormal cognitive functioning, but also the working of neuroscientific, neurocultural and pharmacological interests, which, in this case, are already claiming MCI as the next locus of enhancing the mind and optimising aging. Thinking both within and beyond medicalisation challenges us to find new ways to critically understand the ideas about life and health as they travel, translate or migrate from (neuro)scientific and clinical spheres to cultural life and patient experience.

This paper investigates the impact of refusal to deal by a monopoly supplier of an essential input on firms’ investments in product quality, consumer surplus, and net social welfare.

The paper uses a standard economic model of endogenous quality choice for horizontally differentiated products to compare market performance with and without refusal do deal.

Refusal to deal increases the payoff of the integrated firm and reduces equilibrium investment in quality, consumer surplus, and net social welfare if varieties are moderate or good substitutes. If varieties are poor substitutes, the integrated firm maximizes its payoff setting a wholesale price that allows the downstream rival a small economic profit.

The analysis presented here implies that it is actual rivalry in the development of high-quality substitute varieties that promotes consumer welfare, and that such rivalry is ill served by the exercise of market power in input markets and by the refusal of vertically integrated upstream firms to deal with their nonintegrated downstream rivals. Reliance on the lure of monopoly profit to get good market performance is misplaced.