Volume 11, Issue 1 -

The objective of this paper is to provide an alternative model which can be used to test for oligopsony market power applying plant-level data. For this purpose, we took into account empirical studies and specific developments in the Hungarian dairy industry and specified a model that provides useful benchmarks for an econometric test of market power. The results of the econometric analysis show that the effects from policy changes in Hungary, as well as from plant specific issues are highly statistically significant, and produce evidence suggesting the exercise of oligopsony market power in the Hungarian dairy industry.

Itinerant traders provide an important route for West Africa’s farmers’ to get their perishable produce rapidly to the distant urban markets. But these farmers often accuse the traders of offering “unfairly” low prices while preventing direct access to these markets. Using Ghana’s tomato sector as a case study, we provide the first detailed exploration of the interface between Ghana’s farmers and traders, combining a theoretical model with novel empirical data on daily sales prices and tomato quality. We find that although the prices traders pay farmers are lower than prices in the urban markets, taking into account transport costs, these prices are higher than farmers receive from the local rural market. Our article suggests that policymakers would do better to focus on opening up access to the urban markets rather than on strengthening farmers’ bargaining power with the traders, which restricts market volumes further and harms farmers unable to sell to traders.

Using Qatar as a case study, we exploit a novel micro-data set for 102 raw agricultural imported commodities on a shipment-by-shipment basis over the period January 1, 2005 to June 30, 2010. The data comprise over half a million individual observations, with a very rich set of characteristic specifications. Several interesting initial results emerge from the analysis. First, we find evidence of import-price volatility far in excess of world price volatility across a wide spectrum of commodities. Second, supply origins for virtually all commodities are highly concentrated. In many cases, commodities are sole sourced. Third, although less so, concentration is evidenced among Qatari importing companies for certain commodities. Fourth, we notice anomalies that lead to inefficient shipping methodologies and associated increased costs. The paper concludes by providing an empirical illustration of hedonic price modeling for barley followed by guidance for future empirical research.

Marketing channels play an important role in the competitiveness of agribusiness value chains. Thus, this paper proposes a model for planning marketing channels in agribusiness that also considers transaction costs. This model is developed in two steps, diagnostic and decision, and is applied to the olive oil agribusiness in Portugal. The diagnostic step includes analysis of the agribusiness chain value, marketing channels, transaction characteristics, and institutional environment. The decision step fits the information from the diagnostic into a qualitative cost–benefit analysis, based on a multi-criteria problem of ordering preferences.

: Pricing-to-market (PTM) is often reported to be adopted by exporters, who have invested in their presence on international markets and are interested in keeping and developing their market shares. Then, a markup adjustment is used to partially offset changes of the exchange rate, which are unfavorable for their foreign customers, in order to keep the price level in the importer’s currency relatively unchanged. With only few exceptions, empirical literature often considers PTM adjustments to be linear and symmetric. If asymmetry is allowed, PTM is often regarded as contemporaneous, which is a very simplifying assumption, given the goals pursued by exporters employing PTM strategies. This paper applies the dynamic autoregressive distributed lag (ADRL) approach popularized by Pesaran, Shin, and Smith (2001) and its nonlinear extension by Shin, Yu, and Greenwood-Nimmo (2011) to the data of German sugar confectionery exports to various destination markets. It turns out that in the long-run PTM is neither linear nor symmetric.

Iran is the major producer of pistachio nuts in the world. Iran dominated the international pistachio export markets until 1982, when a new competitor, the United States, emerged in the international markets. Currently, both Iran and the United States are major pistachio exporters to Japan. In this study, we address the following empirical question: Is the Japanese pistachio import market best characterized by Cournot or Bertrand duopoly competition or some other form of game? We use two historical data sets on pistachio prices and quantities imported by Japan from Iran and the United States and estimate the demand functions for these two main exporters. Considering two different strategic variables, quantity and price, full information maximum likelihood (FIML) resulted in different estimates. We used normalized likelihood ratio statistics for the model comparison. Having proper game-specific nonlinear-equation restrictions enabled us to form six alternative models. The model that best fit the data was the Stackelberg model with US quantity leadership.

This article estimates the demand for mint-flavored gum products using grocery store sales data and accounting for consumers’ valuation of quality. Unobserved product attributes, such as flavor quality, are important elements to consider when estimating the demand for gum. The estimation results suggest that gum is an inelastic product. A positive relationship between willingness to pay and unobserved quality was identified, implying that gum industry should be able to command a premium for higher quality mint-flavored products.

We examine the problem of mechanism design of how individual produce firms within NAFTA make their decisions to belong to the Dispute Resolution Corporation (DRC) when facing a set of criteria to which they previously agreed upon. We design a dominant strategy (the truth-telling) mechanism where both Pareto optimality and optimization of DRC’s welfare are achieved. If there are pivotal firms within the DRC, necessary assumptions made for such a mechanism to work cannot be all satisfied. Next, we compare the assumptions necessary for the mechanism to function and the current system for dispute resolution of the DRC. Casual empiricism and to-date existence of the DRC suggest the existence of pivotal firms.

The creation of a Dairy Market Stabilization Program (DMSP) is a current topic of contention in the discussion of United States federal dairy policy. DMSP is designed to speed up income over feed cost (IOFC) margin recovery through triggered disincentives for milk production. This federally mandated supply control with its price-enhancing benefits to producers has proven to be controversial. The controversy surrounding DMSP implementation is illuminated by the construction of a stylized prisoner’s dilemma game in which DMSP acts as an enforceable commitment mechanism to restrict supply and prop up prices when feed costs experience an adverse shock. Volatile and high feed costs are likely to be the norm for the foreseeable future resulting in large expected benefits to milk producers if DMSP is implemented. The game shows that differing dairy management styles lead to different incentives regarding DMSP implementation as producer groups from feed-growing regions oppose DMSP in an effort to raise the costs of their rivals in feed-buying regions. Opposition to DMSP by feed growers can lead to increased market share and profitability in the future.

The U.S. brewing industry plays an important role in the U.S. economy. Although the number of firms has increased in the industry, the industry overall has remained very concentrated, with a three-firm concentration ratio of 81% in 2000 (Stack 2000). Increasing concentration in the U.S brewing industry raises public policy concerns due to the potential impact of concentration on market performance and efficiency, for example, the recent decision by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to block the proposed merger between AB–InBev and Mexico’s Groupo Modelo. Employing an improved version of the structure-conduct-performance (SCP) approach, we examine the relationship between concentration and profitability in the U.S. brewing industry. Our results support the hypothesis that market concentration impacts market performance. We, however, did not address the issue of collusive conduct or market power explicitly.

Milk is an important agricultural product that has traditionally been processed by cooperatives. Across member states of the EU-27, however, large variation exists between the national market shares of cooperatives in dairy processing. Theoretical models suggest that a strong cooperative sector secures competitive regional prices for agricultural produce. Empirical studies which seek to quantify these effects are rare though. We use panel data to study the impact of cooperative strength – measured by market shares – on national farm gate milk prices in the EU-27 for the period from 2000 to 2010. Our results reveal a positive effect of cooperative market share on price that is relatively large and robust over different specifications of the econometric model. We conclude that dairy cooperatives have a pro-competitive effect and that exemptions for cooperatives from anti-trust regulation may be justified.