Prices for nearly all basic commodity rose at unprecedented rates throughout early 2008, only to fall nearly as fast as financial markets and global economies began to collapse. Rising food prices in 2008 led to concerns that commodity price spikes would lead to more general food inflation, but...

In the recent past, the concentration of seed maize processing and marketing in Kenya has raised serious public concerns. The inability of this industry to ensure affordable prices of certified seed maize for the farming community has led policy makers to question its market behaviour. In spite...

This paper reviews the basic antitrust standards for the supermarket industry including definition of product and geographic markets and the exercise of coordinated and unilateral market power. It surveys the structure-conduct-performance and the New Empirical Industrial Organization literature...

The ready-to-eat cereal industry is characterized by high concentration, high price-cost margins, large advertising to sales ratios, and numerous introductions of new products. Previous researchers have concluded that the ready-to-eat cereal industry is a classic example of an industry with...

This study reports experimental market power and efficiency outcomes for a computational wholesale electricity market operating in the short run under systematically varied concentration and capacity conditions. The pricing of electricity is determined by means of a clearinghouse double auction...

The main goal of this manuscript is to explore the retailer conduct in the milk market in a U.S. Midwestern city, based upon a structural estimation of consumer milk demand and retailer optimality conditions. To model milk demand we rely upon the Almost Ideal Demand System, while allowing the...

Germany is the second important coffee market in the world, just overshadowed by the United States. Coffee is the most famous beverage in Germany - even more popular than beer. On the supply side dominate few roasters. Market structure influences the market outcome and explains the processors'...

This paper proposes a new framework to include the interaction of vertically differentiated goods, which was largely ignored in previous studies, to analyze the market power of exporters and importers in world markets of agricultural commodities. The framework is applied in an empirical study of...

The demand for organic fresh fruits and vegetable continues to grow at a rate far higher than the rest of the produce industry. The cost of meeting organic certification standards, however, has meant that supply has been slow to adjust. With limited supply, we hypothesize that organic suppliers...

The increasing use of production contracts in the hog sector has reduced the number of spot market transactions, raised concerns about price manipulation and helped to spur legislation requiring price reporting by packers. Using data from the 2002 and 2007 Censuses of Agriculture, this study...