measuring market power in bilateral oligopoly the wholesale market for beef econometric methods for assessing the degree of market power typically rely on a maintained hypothesis of price taking behavior on one side of the market or the other in the analysis of bilateral oligopoly however one would like to leave open the question of whether buyers or sellers or both behave competitively while allowing for the possible exercise of market power on either side in this paper we address the problem of measuring market power in bilateral oligopoly this requires that we first distinguish among three candidate equilibrium concepts bilateral price taking seller price taking and buyer price taking choosing among them comes down to a test of nonnested nonlinear simultaneous equation models our application to the u s wholesale market for beef characterized by high degrees of concentration among both sellers beef packers and buyers primarily retail grocery chains reveals seller price taking among the three candidates to be the most consistent with the data in particular the hypothesis of price taking conduct on both sides of the market can be rejected this is a conclusion that would not have been reached had we considered monopoly conduct by sellers as the only alternative to perfect competition

effects of horizontal consolidation under bilateral imperfect competition between processors and retailers this article considers bilateral imperfect competition between processors and retailers to estimate the trade off between market power and cost efficiency the model is based on pricing rules from a firm s profit maximization and nests both oligopoly and oligopsony models an empirical analysis for us beef processors and retailers suggests that processors tend to exercise oligopsony market power in procuring cattle but they are unlikely to exercise market power on retailers when retailers and processors are considered as one integrated sector efficiency effects from the increased concentration in the us beef packing industry are slightly larger than market power effects when processors market power is considered separately from retailers market power the difference between cost saving and market power effects becomes greater the cost elasticity estimate 0 99 indicates that a further merger would result in little economies of scale in the future therefore although we find that efficiency effect

simulating the impacts of contract supplies in a spot market contract market equilibrium setting this article embeds a principal agent model within a market equilibrium model of contract and cash markets to analyze the impact of contracting on the spot market for hogs the equilibrium model incorporates both quality differentiation in the contract market and an endogenously determined cash market price for three types of contracting scenarios market equilibrium conditions are derived and results are presented for a numerical example contrary to some empirical results our model shows that the increased supply of hogs under typical formula price contracts can increase or decrease the cash market price depending on the relative size of overall contract supplies

agricultural support policies in imperfectly competitive markets why market power matters in policy design most agricultural policy analysis assumes that markets are perfectly competitive despite increasing evidence to the contrary we demonstrate that the interaction of market power and government intervention may lead to outcomes that are counter to key results of policy analysis for perfectly competitive markets we show that market power may reduce or eliminate entirely the net welfare benefits from removing two traditional support mechanisms price floors and deficiency payments and may increase considerably the government s cost of implementing either of them accordingly optimally designed price support measures may improve welfare in the presence of downstream oligopoly and or oligopsony power copyright 2011 oxford university press

fob or uniform delivered prices strategic choice and welfare effects in spatial markets firms typically use either fob mill or uniform delivered ud pricing what competitive factors motivate this choice and what are the welfare implications of the choice we study these questions in a duopsony market where farmers with unit elastic supply curves sell to processing firms in results that differ considerably from prior work we show that the equilibrium price policy depends upon the extent of competition in the market with fob pricing emerging under very competitive structures and ud pricing emerging under less competition mixed fob ud pricing may also emerge in equilibrium in most cases welfare is higher under ud than fob pricing

cooperatives as entrants a potential shortcoming of game theoretic models in industrial organization is their failure to consider consumers as players we introduce a customer coalition a cooperative as a potential entrant and compare the cooperative entry threat with that posed by the usualforprofit entrant we identify four fundamental distinctions between cooperative andfor profit entrants and demonstrate that the strategic interplay between a cooperative and an incumbent firm may differ markedly from that between the incumbent and a for profit entrant the results impart a prospectively powerful role to potential cooperatives in beneficially regulating free market performance

nonparametric tests of market structure an application to the cigarette industry the revealed preference approach is used to construct a nonparametric test of the monopoly model and some simple generalizations of it and the test is applied to data for the cigarette industry it exploits the maintained hypothesis that variations in the excise tax charged on a package of cigarettes allow us to assess seller reactions to common exogenous variations in marginal cost results indicate that the monopoly hypothesis and other simple models that do not embody at least a moderate amount of competition serve as poor predictors of the effects of excise tax changes on cigarette prices sales and revenues copyright 1987 by blackwell publishing ltd

the tradeoff between oligopsony power and cost efficiency in horizontal consolidation an example from beef packing in this paper we model the tradeoff between regional oligopsony power and cost efficiency resulting from consolidation in a food processing industry the model can be used to calculate the cost reductions necessary to offset the anticompetitive effects of market power and to compare them to actual cost savings achieved through plant scale or multiplant operating economies for an application we choose the beef packing industry for this case we find that the estimated cost savings necessary to neutralize the anticompetitive effects of consolidation in beef packing are about half the actual cost savings from scale economies

industrialization and consolidation in the u s food sector implications for competition and welfare good sources for information on recent developments in food market structure include barkema drabenstott and welch u s department of agriculture 1996b and rogers my objective is not to add to this literature but rather to consider what we have learned as a profession about the rapid consolidation in food processing and distribution what are its implications for market power economic efficiency and the distribution of economic welfare among producers consumers and marketers

a model of price determination for fresh produce with application to california iceberg lettuce most fresh produce commodities are highly perishable thus supply at any time is fixed at prices above marginal harvest costs in this paper we develop a model of short run farm price determination for produce commodities that incorporates this key structural feature and also allows for imperfect competition in price determination the model is empirically manifest in a switching regression framework and applied to california iceberg lettuce results support the general model relative to a model restricted to competitive behavior and suggest that retailer buyers capture most of the rents from lettuce production and sale

measuring market power in multi product oligopolies the us meat industry this paper develops and estimates an economic model for measuring market power in a quantity setting oligopoly engaged in the joint production of demand related goods the model which allows for firms conjectures about both same and cross market responses to own output variation is applied to the us meat beef and pork industry he hypothesis that the industry s equilibrium reflects price taking behaviour is rejected the hypothesis of no cross effects cannot be rejected roughly half of the farm to retail price spreads for beef and pork appear to be attributable to market power

tax incidence when individuals are time inconsistent the case of cigarette excise taxes abstract one of the most cogent criticisms of excise taxes is their regressivity with lower income groups spending a much larger share of their income on goods such as cigarettes than do higher income groups we argue that traditional quantity based measures of incidence are only appropriate under a very restrictive time consistent model of consumption of sin goods a model that is much more consistent with existing evidence on smoking decisions is a time inconsistent formulation where excise taxes on cigarettes serve a self control function that is valued by smokers who would like to quit but cannot this self control function benefits lower income groups more since they have a significantly higher price sensitivity of smoking calibrations show that as a result cigarette taxes are much less regressive than previously assumed and are even progressive for a wide variety of parameter values

estimating market power of u s dairy cooperatives in the fluid milk market a structural econometric model of vertical relationships is adopted to identify pricing behavior in the supply chain for fluid milk in the united states the model consists of a system of equations that allows estimation of oligopoly power of dairy co operatives and downstream firms exploiting federal milk marketing order regulations to identify co operatives marginal cost a key finding is that co operatives use their market power to raise the farm price of milk by almost 9 above marginal cost resulting in an income transfer of more than 600 million per year in markets regulated by federal milk marketing orders copyright 2012 oxford university press

a dynamic theory of conjectural variations this paper explores the relationship between dynamic oligopolistic competition and static conjectural variations equilibria using an infinite horizon adjustment cost model the author demonstrates that any steady state closed loop subgame perfect equilibrium coincides with a conjectural variations equilibrium in the case of linear demand and quadratic costs the dynamic conjectures consistent with closed loop steady state equilibria are negative constant symmetric and vary continuously with the discount rate and the adjustment cost parameter in an interval between the static consistent conjectures and zero cournot copyright 1992 by blackwell publishing ltd

nonparametric tests for monopsonistic market power exertion measurement of market power exerted in imperfectly competitive markets has received considerable attention in recent years this literature has become known as the new empirical industrial organization neio bresnahan 1989 provides an extensive review of these studies most often empirical work relies on estimating monopoly market power exertion from first order profit maximization conditions using aggregate industry data estimates of market power exertion depend on the functional forms selected for aggregate supply and demand importantly econometric identification of the market power parameter estimated from the first order conditions depends critically on second order curvature properties of the functions selected bresnahan 1982 lau little is known about the effects of model misspecification on estimated market power parameters while most of the neio market power literature focuses on monopoly power it is likely that firms with potential market power in agricultural and natural resource markets more of

who pays for obesity adult obesity is a growing problem from 1962 to 2006 obesity prevalence nearly tripled to 35 1 percent of adults the rising prevalence of obesity is not limited to a particular socioeconomic group and is not unique to the united states should this widespread obesity epidemic be a cause for alarm from a personal health perspective the answer is an emphatic yes but when it comes to justifications of public policy for reducing obesity the analysis becomes more complex a common starting point is the assertion that those who are obese impose higher health costs on the rest of the population a statement which is then taken to justify public policy interventions but the question of who pays for obesity is an empirical one and it involves analysis of how obese people fare in labor markets and health insurance markets we will argue that the existing literature on these topics suggests that obese people on average do bear the costs and benefits of their eating and exercise habits we begin by estimating the lifetime costs of obesity we then discuss the extent to which private health insurance pools together obese and thin whether health insurance causes obesity and whether being fat might actually cause positive externalities for those who are not obese if public policy to reduce obesity is not justified on the grounds of external costs imposed on others then the remaining potential justification would need to be on the basis of helping people to address problems of ignorance or self control that lead to obesity in the conclusion we offer a few thoughts about some complexities of such a justification

child poverty in sweden and the united states the effect of social transfers and parental labor force participation the authors compare the incidence and some of the causes of child poverty in sweden and the united states in selected years using data from the luxembourg income study the u s sample is restricted to white non hispanic children to present the most favorable comparison with sweden s more homogeneous population when parents labor force participation and demographic characteristics are taken into account the proportion of children in families whose income prior to social transfers and taxes was below the poverty line defined as 40 of median disposable income adjusted for family size is very similar in the two countries because all poor children in sweden received transfers and many in the united states did not however and because transfers were more generous in sweden a much lower percentage of children in sweden than in the united states were poor after social transfers and taxes regardless of parents work effort or other characteristics

price floors and technical inefficiency in india s sugar processing industry in india cane is processed into sugar by cooperatives public enterprises and private for profit firms the indian government sets a unique floor price for each processor that is increasing in the firm s effectiveness in converting cane into sugar the floor price binds for public and private firms but not for cooperatives which rebate profits to members we argue that this price floor policy creates a disincentive for private and public firms to be technically efficient in converting cane to sugar in support of this hypothesis an analysis of 593 indian sugar factories from 1992 to 2007 reveals statistically significant differences in technical efficiency with cooperatives being the most efficient and public firms least efficient we estimate welfare losses due to the technical inefficiency attributable to the price floor policy and argue that it can be eliminated by enacting policy to base price floors upon quality of the cane input received by a factory

welfare state disincentives with endogenous habits and norms it is assumed in this paper that habits and social norms constrain the influence of economic disincentives on individual behavior but that these constraints themselves may subsequently be influenced by the very same disincentives it is also assumed that an individual is more likely to obey such habits and norms if many individuals in society do so though such constraints on economic behavior usually recede only gradually in response to changes in economic incentives it is argued that major macroeconomic shocks may drastically speed up the process a ketchup effect these features may generate multiple equilibria and vicious dynamics

imperfect competition functional forms and the size and distribution of research benefits abstract the effects of functional forms for supply and demand on the size and distribution of the returns to research are examined under a range of forms of competition under perfect competition the choice of functional form is relatively unimportant for the estimation of research benefits under imperfect competition the combination of the choice of functional forms for supply and demand and the nature of the research induced supply shift can have profound implications for the results functional form plays a much more important role than in the competitive model the most important contrast is between the constant elasticity model and the linear model along with various cases of a generalized linear model these findings are illustrated using a combination of analytical results and numerical simulations

the farm retail price spread in an imperfectly competitive food industry in a previous article in this journal gardner investigated the effects of three distinct forces affecting food system equilibria shifts in retail demand shifts in farm commodity supply and shifts in marketing input supply he derived comparative static predictions about how the quotient of retail and farm prices the retailfarm price ratio would adjust to changes in each of these exogenous effects the investigation was conducted within a framework that

a theory of rational addiction we develop a theory of rational addiction in which rationality means a consistent plan to maximize utility over time strong addiction to a good requires a big effect of past consumption of the good on current consumption such powerful complementarities cause some steady states to be unstable they are an important part of our analysis because even small deviations from the consumption at an unstable steady state can lead to large cumulative rises over time in addictive consumption or to rapid falls in consumption to abstention our theory also implies that cold turkey is used to end strong addictions that addicts often go on binges that addicts respond more to permanent than to temporary changes in prices of addictive goods and that anxiety and tensions can precipitate an addiction

dynamic oligopoly in the rice export market a linear quadratic dynamic oligopoly model is used to estimate the competitiveness of the rice export market the model nests various market structures using either open loop or feedback strategies the estimated feedback model implies a less competitive market structure than the estimated open loop model the rice export market is oligopolistic but it is closer to competitive than collusive copyright 1989 by mit press

the effects of imperfect competition on the size and distribution of research benefits studies of agricultural research benefits usually assume perfectly competitive markets studies that have allowed for market power of agribusiness firms have generally assumed unrealistic pure monopsony or monopoly behavior this paper allows for processing firms to exhibit a range of degrees of oligopsony power in buying raw farm products and oligopoly power in selling processed farm products the results indicate that different types of research induced technical change can exacerbate or ameliorate distortions from the exercise of market power by agribusiness firms which affects the size and especially the distribution of research benefits

modeling the pattern of structural change in u s meat demand the hypothesis of structural change in u s meat demand is tested in a four meat almost ideal demand system with parameters following a gradual switching regression model the results support the notion that structural change partly explains the observed u s meat consumption patterns structural change is biased against beef neutral for pork in favor of chicken and fish and it does not affect estimated elasticities the estimated path of structural change implies a rapid transition to a new regime in the mid 1970s although a smooth path cannot be ruled out

structural change in factor demand relationships in the u s food and kindred products industry this analysis utilizes multivariate gradual switching regression techniques and bayesian inferential procedures to evaluate structural change in factor demand relationships in the food manufacturing industry food materials are included as an input into the food manufacturing industry the results confirm a significant gradual structural change that initiated in 1980 price elasticities indicate that the demands for raw food materials and energy have become more elastic while the demand for labor has become less elastic morishima elasticities of substitution indicate that nearly all factors are substitutes and that the degree of substitutability has significantly increased in recent years

oligopoly power in the food and tobacco industries in this article we estimate and test for the degree of oligopoly power and economies of scale in forty food and tobacco industries using the new empirical industrial organization neio framework and four digit sic data lerner indices and elasticities of scale are compared throughout the entire food and tobacco industries t tests verify that all but three of these industries exert statistically significant degrees of oligopoly power and that over 82 of these industries exhibit nonconstant returns to scale the empirical results also provide estimates of the price elasticities of demand for each industry

estimating the market for tomatoes an econometric model of the market for tomatoes in israel is developed to take into account the distortions brought about by the marketing board and intermediaries the existence of monopoly and monopsony power is hypothesized by analyzing the middlemen s optimal behavior being compelled by the marketing board to purchase all produce wholesalers exert monopsony power by reducing quantities marketed to consumers by selling surpluses to the marketing board at the minimum price the empirical results confirm the existence of strong monopsony power together with weak monopoly power in that market

a test for market power using marginal input and output prices with application to the u s beef processing industry for a number of years it has only been applied in rather limited ways in this paper we show how this method can be used to develop a general test for oligopoly and oligopsony behavior the test exploits the fact that under price taking behavior there is a known fixed relationship between changes in input prices on output supply and changes in output price on input demands the model and test developed are shown to be quite general and not dependent on empirical estimates of output demand and input supply we apply this test to the u s beef processing industry because of the high level of market concentration in this industry there is concern that beef packing firms are exercising market power in the purchase of finished cattle by keeping cattle prices below competitive levels and in the sale of packed beef by keeping prices above competitive levels most previous studies of the beef packing industry have found evidence that firms at least part of the time are exercising market power in the purchase of finished cattle schroeter azzam and pagoulatos schroeter and azzam azzam azzam and park koontz garcia and hudson or are exercising market power in the sale of packed beef schroeter schroeter and azzam however all of these studies are fairly restrictive in their assumptions regarding fixed proportions the relationship between market power in the input and output markets and the specification of input supply and output demand previous studies by muth and by muth and wohlgenant 1999 which allow for variable proportions and do not impose restrictions on the relationship of market power in each market did not find evidence of market power in the output and input markets for the beef packing industry however the results of each of these studies do depend on the specification of input supply and output demand

excise tax avoidance the case of state cigarette taxes we conduct an applied welfare economics analysis of cigarette tax avoidance we develop an extension of the standard formula for the optimal pigouvian corrective tax to incorporate the possibility that consumers avoid the tax by making purchases in nearby lower tax jurisdictions to provide a key parameter for our formula we estimate a structural endogenous switching regression model of border crossing and cigarette prices in illustrative calculations we find that for many states after taking into account tax avoidance the optimal tax is at least 20 smaller than the standard pigouvian tax that simply internalizes external costs our empirical estimate that tax avoidance strongly responds to the price differential is the main reason for this result we also use our results to examine the benefits of replacing avoidable state excise taxes with a harder to avoid federal excise tax on cigarettes

does oligopsony power matter in price support policy design empirical evidence from the thai jasmine rice market in the oligopsony market farmers may receive low prices and policy analysis assuming perfect competition can yield serious bias results in this paper we estimate oligopsony power between processors and farmers and evaluate the welfare impact of the paddy pledging program ppp a generous price support program in the thai jasmine rice market with an imperfect competition model we develop a model that consists of rice supply equation and derived demand equation we then simultaneously estimate these equations using system estimation methods to recover oligopsony power parameters finally we use these parameters to assess the welfare impact of the price support program using annual panel data running from crop marketing year 2001 2002 2015 2016 and exploiting the institutional feature of the ppp we find strong evidence of some oligopsony power a moderate level of oligopsony price distortion and a negative relationship between price support and oligopsony power we also find that the ppp is inefficient but effective in income redistribution moreover the program benefits both farmers and consumers with better policymaking decisions the ppp can be efficient by setting a suitable support price therefore our results show that in the case of the thai jasmine rice market the generally accepted wisdom about agricultural price support policy does not necessarily hold and price support can be designed to improve the efficiency of the market

inter firm differences in fed cattle prices in the southern plains pooled cross section time series data were used to assess inter firm differences in fed cattle prices paid by southern plains meatpackers during june 1989 significant price differences were found among packers even after accounting for numerous factors affecting fed cattle value some buyers paid higher prices and some lower prices than did one of the three largest packers as a group the big three firms paid lower prices than did smaller firms both in the southern plains as a whole and in three of its subregions

conjectural variations as a reduced form abstract the conjectural variations solution is usually seen as the reduced form of the equilibrium of an unmodeled dynamic game we show that in linear oligopolies and for an open set of values of the discount factor this correspondence holds exactly for a quantity setting repeated game with minimax punishments during t periods

measuring market power and cost efficiency effects of industrial concentration in this paper i show how appelbaum s framework for testing price taking behavior in a single industry can be formally extended to consider concentration explicitly in so doing i separate the market power effect of concentration from its cost efficiency effect data from the us beef packing industry are used to illustrate an empirical application of the model the findings support oligopsonistic market power and slaughter cost efficiency in the industry however the cost efficiency effect outweighs the market power effect

efficient redistribution through commodity markets efficiency in redistribution is measured in terms of deadweight loss generated per dollar of economic surplus transferred between consumers and producers of a commodity by means of market intervention the implications of supply and demand elasticities for efficiency in redistribution are examined with special attention to the comparison of production control and deficiency payment programs the results may be used to aid in the evaluation of commodity programs and as a basis for consideration of the hypothesis that observed policies are efficient given the political power of interest groups

taxes cigarette consumption and smoking intensity this paper analyses the compensatory behavior of smokers exploiting data on cotinine concentration a metabolite of nicotine measured in a large population of smokers over time we show that smokers compensate for tax hikes by extracting more nicotine per cigarette our study makes two important contributions first as smoking a given cigarette more intensively is detrimental to health our results question the usefulness of tax increases second we develop a model of rational addiction where agents can also adjust their intensity of smoking and we show that the previous empirical results suffer from estimation biases

the simple analytics of tobacco taxation with illegal supply this paper examines the impact of tobacco excise taxes where legal and illegal supplies coexist the government s objective is to minimize cigarettes smoked in the economy or to maximize revenue or to minimize illegal activity it reacts to a competitive illegal supply in an adjoining jurisdiction a model of consumer choice is used to demonstrate how demand response to tax changes can yield counterintuitive results while the model mimics the canadian market similar situations characterize the us and european markets a novel element of the paper is the treatment of externalities on the supply side rather than the demand side resume analytique simple des taxes sur le tabac quand il y a offre illegale ce memoire examine l impact des taxes sur la vente de tabac quand des offres legale et illegale coexistent l objectif du gouvernement est de minimiser les cigarettes fumees dans l economie ou de maximiser le revenu fiscal ou de minimiser l activite illegale il doit prendre en compte l offre concurrentielle illegale dans une juridiction contigue on utilise un modele de choix du consommateur pour montrer comment la reaction de la demande aux changements dans les taxes peut engendrer des resultats contre intuitifs bien que le modele soit concu pour le marche canadien on trouve des situations avec des caracteristiques similaires dans les marches americain et europeens un element novateur du memoire est sa prise en compte des externalites du cote de l offre plutot que du cote de la demande

estimating the degree of market power in the beef packing industry a technique for assessing the degree of monopoly power developed by appelbaum 1979 1982 is extended here to permit measurement of monopsony power as well data from the u s beef packing industry are examined the results reveal small but statistically significant monopoly monopsony price distortions in slaughter cattle and wholesale beef markets but in spite of a recent trend toward heightened concentration in the industry give no indication that performance has become appreciably less competitive of late this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

intra household resource allocation an inferential approach if household income is pooled and then allocated to maximize welfare then income under the control of mothers and fathers should have the same impact on demand with survey data on family health and nutrition in brazil the equality of parental income effects is rejected unearned income in the hands of a mother has a bigger effect on her family s health than income under the control of a father for child survival probabilities the effect is almost twenty times bigger the common preference or neoclassical model of the household is rejected if unearned income is measured with error and income is pooled then the ratio of maternal to paternal income effects should be the same equality of the ratios cannot be rejected there is also evidence for gender preference mothers prefer to devote resources to improving the nutritional status of their daughters fathers to sons

imperfect competition in multiproduct food industries with application to pear processing agricultural product markets often involve relatively few firms processing a farm product into multiple processed products this market structure prompts concern that processing firms may exercise both oligopsony and oligopoly power the present paper develops and applies a methodology to test simultaneously for market power in both the raw input market and multiple processed output markets application of the methodology to california pear processing indicates the industry has exerted power in both its farm input market and the markets for canned pears and fruit cocktail

demand for farm output in a complete system of demand functions demand interrelationships for farm outputs that are theoretically consistent with consumer demand and marketing group behavior provide important linkages between retail and farm prices a conceptual model based on reduced form specifications for retail and farm prices is formulated and applied empirically to a set of eight disaggregated food commodities this approach circumvents the need for retail quantities which are frequently unavailable for disaggregated food commodities the results are consistent with theory and generally indicate significant substitution between farm and marketing inputs except for poultry derived demand elasticities are at least 40 larger compared to those derived assuming fixed proportions

child care subsidies and labor supply in sweden this paper utilizes data from a swedish household survey for 1984 the hus data in combination with data on public child care fees and spaces per child by community we argue that the subsidy rate and availability of spaces determined by the political leaders of the community is to a large extent exogenous to the household the joint out of home child care and labor supply decision is analyzed by logit and ordered probit choice models we find that the high quality public child care in sweden encourages labor market activity of women with preschoolers even when the spouse s income is high and that when spaces are not rationed a lower price encourages use

parastatals as instruments of government policy the food corporation of india abstract reforms of agri food policies typically occur without taking account of the structure of markets in which the policy reforms occur it is usually assumed that markets are perfectly competitive an assumption that is violated in the presence of parastatals they often play multiple roles in meeting the objectives of government policy through their activities in procurement and distribution of food commodities after presenting a general framework we modify it to model the specifics of the food corporation of india and the functions that it fulfils in providing price support to farmers and food security to poor households keeping the government s policy objectives unchanged we then alter the functions that the fci fulfils to be consistent with recommendations from the high level committee that recently investigated the role of the fci these recommendations included the substitution of negotiable warehouse receipts for the minimum support price scheme for farmers and the substitution of cash transfers in place of the targeted public distribution system for poor households we find that this re instrumentation of the means of achieving policy objectives together with a consequent greater role for the private sector leads to substantial welfare gains as well as to greater food security when measured as food availability

jeux sans frontieres tax competition and tax coordination when countries differ in size closer international integration is putting increasing pressure on existing national tax structures this paper uses a simple two country model to address a range of consequent policy concerns focusing particularly on the role of country size differences in size exacerbate the inefficiency from noncooperative behavior harming both countries the smaller country loses from harmonization to any tax rate between those set in the noncooperative equilibrium but both countries gain from the imposition of a minimum tax anywhere in that range the fully optimal response to freer cross border trade however may be to do nothing jel h20 h77

measuring returns to an innovation in an imperfectly competitive market application to mechanical harvesting of processing tomatoes in taiwan in this paper we develop and apply a general imperfect competition model to evaluate returns to a cost reducing innovation most related work has applied models of perfect competition results demonstrate that welfare estimates derived from a model of perfect competition may be seriously distorted when the relevant market is imperfectly competitive application to mechanical harvesting of processing tomatoes in taiwan reveals the potential for significant benefits to adoption of mechanical harvesting in taiwan however farmers incentives to adopt the harvester are attenuated because total benefits are reduced by oligopsony power in tomato procurement and imperfectly competitive processors will capture a large share of the benefits that remain in this paper we analyze the welfare impacts of mechanical harvesting of processing tomatoes in taiwan a key distinguishing feature of the study relative to previous empirical work on returns to innovations is that it permits market power to be exhibited in both the markets for the raw agricultural product and the processed product outputs indeed the empirical results find significant processor market power in taiwan in both the procurement of raw tomatoes and the sale of processed products in the domestic market the study demonstrates that welfare estimates derived from a model of perfect competition may be seriously distorted when in fact the relevant markets are imper

resource allocation under demand uncertainty and private information we study the effect of multilateral private information on the efficiency of markets where capacity constrained upstream agents supply a resource to downstream entities facing uncertain end demands we analyze two models a pooling system in which a single downstream principal pools a resource from multiple upstream agents and a distribution system in which one upstream principal allocates a resource across multiple downstream agents we show that the presence of multilateral private information does not hinder efficiency in the pooling system in contrast in the distribution system the quantities allocated to downstream agents can exceed as well as fall short of their first best levels these results shed light on the recently improved performance of u s agricultural produce market and the observed episodes of shortages oversupplies in flu vaccine and other seasonal markets this paper was accepted by manel baucells decision analysis