from food availability to nutritional capabilities advancing food security analysis abstract this paper has a threefold objective first it provides a comprehensive review of different approaches to analysing food security second it highlights the added value provided by the capability approach and the human development paradigm third it proposes a methodology to assess food security through this approach our proposal entails three basic steps 1 analysis of food entitlements 2 analysis of nutritional capabilities and 3 analysis of the capability to be food secure in this way we can move beyond income entitlement or livelihood related frameworks and identify the root causes of food insecurity food insecurity can be the result of a lack of education health or other basic capabilities that constitute people s wellbeing this therefore allows situating the study within the broader area of wellbeing and development

ingredients of famine analysis availability and entitlements famines often take place in situations of moderate to good food availability without any significant decline of food supply per head the paper presents an alternative approach to famines which does not concentrate on availability but on people s ability to command food through legal means available in the society including the use of production possibilities trade opportunities entitlements vis a vis the state etc the approach is explained focusing on exchange entitlement mappings fluctuations in which can lead to big shifts in the intergroup distribution of food command the approach is then applied to the bengal famine of 1943 the ethiopian famine in wollo in 1973 and the bangladesh famine in 1974 and some general conclusions are drawn about the nature and classes of famines

marketing margins and price uncertainty the case of the u s wheat market this paper seeks to determine the effect of changes in output price risk on marketing margins a theoretical model of price determination in a marketing channel with risk averse firms is developed this model shows that if marketing firms are competitive and decreasingly absolute risk averse then an increase in output price risk should result in higher expected marketing margins empirical evidence from the wheat marketing channel supports the theoretical model increased price variability significantly increases wheat marketing margins for both the farm mill margin and the mill retail margin these results suggest a potential benefit from price stabilization programs

modeling the effects of restricting packer owned livestock in the u s swine industry an imperfectly competitive model of processor packer behavior is formulated to estimate welfare effects from restricting alternative marketing arrangements of livestock procured by packers pork was aggregated into a composite good and hog supply was partitioned into negotiated spot contract and packer owned the model was estimated with the dynamic sur method using weekly mandatory price reporting mpr hog and pork data from 2001 to 2005 the model incorporates production uncertainty by modeling expected pork output as expected output in the input demand functions the welfare effects from banning packer owned hogs indicate that independent producers consumers and packers all would lose

a century of research on agricultural markets this article provides a perspective on major innovations in research on agricultural markets over the past century we review research on market structure and performance vertical coordination arrangements and institutions for producer collective action contributions to empirical modeling of agricultural price determination and marketing margins are also evaluated as are innovations in research on spatial market relationships and the role of storage finally we discuss contributions to understanding market information systems and the functioning of market based mechanisms for agri

markdown pricing and cattle supply in the beef packing industry we determine the effect of anticipated and unanticipated cattle supply on the departure of fed cattle price from cattle s marginal value product results indicate fed cattle were priced significantly below their marginal value during 31 of the 59 quarters between 1972ii and 1986iv when unanticipated supply shocks are small markdown behavior is consistent with the hypothesis that packers follow an average processing cost apc pricing rule one implication of our results is that reducing industry concentration is not likely to lead to changes in cattle prices predicted by scp based studies of the industry

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

effects of mineral commodity price shocks on monetary policy in developed countries this article investigates effects of changes in mineral commodity prices on monetary policy using macroeconomic data from three mineral producing countries australia canada and new zealand and two non mineral resource countries usa and uk i estimate the impulse response functions of the policy interest rates and the core consumer price index cpi inflation rates to mineral commodity price shocks i find that the central banks in both groups of the examined countries significantly respond to mineral commodity price shocks in responses to an unexpected 10 increase in mineral commodity prices the central banks are estimated to increase their policy interest rates by approximately 0 8 percentage points moreover the central banks seem to take anticipatory policy reactions to control core cpi variations triggered by these shocks thus mineral commodity prices would act as important determinants of the monetary policies in both groups of the examined countries these findings would be useful for an

imperfect information and dynamic conjectural variations this article analyzes oligopoly interaction in an environment where firms are imperfectly informed about the evolution of the market demand curve the analysis develops a two period cournot framework under the assumptions that demand shifts are positively serially correlated that firms never directly observe the demand curve and that firms never observe the previous quantity decisions of rivals firms do draw inferences about the position of the demand curve from past observations on prices consequently the current output of a firm will influence the current market price which will then influence rivals inferences about future demand the future output decisions of rivals will respond accordingly the theory predicts negative dynamic conjectural variations essentially a firm perceives that an increase in its output will lower the current market clearing price which will cause rival firms to think that the demand curve has shifted down and hence induce them to lower their outputs in the future

risk response in the beef marketing channel a multivariate generalized arch m approach a model of the farm retail price spread for beef is specified under rational expectations in which systematic risk response on the part of marketing intermediaries is allowed the three equation structural model contains potentially time varying risk terms in margin and supply equations which i approximate and estimate using a multivariate garch in mean approach the estimated model is used to infer relative risk premia in beef margins and to simulate short run equilibrium risk effects results indicate that price risk has at times had substantial impacts on farm and retail beef prices and production

trade association disclosure rules incentives to share information and welfare in this article i propose a monopolistic competition framework to analyze the effects of different disclosure rules used by trade associations on the incentives to share information and on the welfare of consumers firms and society this framework is appropriate whenever a single firm cannot influence aggregate market magnitudes and serves as a benchmark for the analysis of information pooling agreements abstracting from strategic considerations i report two main results first a policy of nonexclusionary disclosure destroys the incentives to share information while exclusionary disclosure preserves them second information sharing increases expected total surplus with cournot competition but decreases it with bertrand competition in the context of a quadratic normal model with demand uncertainty

information sharing through sales report this paper studies information sharing through sales reports in cournot and bertrand duopolies with common demand uncertainty without sales reports firms choose quantities or prices strategically to manipulate the rivals perception about the market sales reports eliminate firms incentives to do so and keep them only maximizing the current profits if firms make independent sales report decisions no sales report is the unique subgame perfect equilibrium however in a cournot bertrand industry firms are better off with sales reports when goods are substitutes complements further sales reports decrease increase consumer surplus and social welfare in a cournot bertrand industry the results sharply contrast those from the previous information sharing models where firms exchange signals about the future demand copyright 1994 by blackwell publishing ltd

long run industry equilibrium with uncertainty abstract in this paper we consider the effects of uncertainty on industry equilibrium when firms must commit themselves to production before prices are revealed we show that a an increase in demand uncertainty will i not affect the equilibrium number and size of firms if they are risk neutral ii reduce the equilibrium number of firms if they are risk averse but will have an ambiguous effect on their size b in equilibrium firms operate at capacity if they are risk neutral but at excess capacity if they are risk averse

why has poland avoided the price liberalization trap the case of the hog pork sector price liberalization in the agri food economy in the transition economies is likely to slip into a trap food prices rocket up consumption declines but food supply does not catch up and even contracts however during the transition period following the 1989 price liberalization the polish hog pork sector succeeded in avoiding this trap by conducting market structure and econometric analysis this article looks for the reasons for this success in the polish hog pork sector the restructuring of state owned enterprises and the emergence of private firms introduced an effective price transmission mechanism between the processing retailing and farm levels this mechanism allowed farm supply to respond to changed demand and to take advantage of increased retail prices such a relatively efficient marketing system was made possible by a relatively stable macroeconomic environment and limited government intervention

government assisted oligopoly coordination a concrete case in 1993 the danish antitrust authority decided to gather and publish firm specific transactions prices for two grades of ready mixed concrete in three regions of denmark following initial publication average prices of reported grades increased by 15 20 percent within one year we investigate whether this was due to a business upturn and or capacity constraints but argue that these seem to have little explanatory power we conclude that a better explanation is that publication of prices allowed firms to reduce the intensity of oligopoly price competition and hence led to increased prices contrary to the aim of the authority

measuring food insecurity the frequency and severity of coping strategies abstract defining and interpreting food security and measuring it in reliable valid and cost effective ways have proven to be stubborn problems facing researchers and programs intended to monitor food security risks this paper briefly reviews the conceptual and methodological literature on food insecurity measurment describes a particular method for distinguishing and measuring short term food insecurity at the household level and discusses ways of generalizing the method the method developed enumerates the frequency and severity of strategies relied on by urban households when faced with a short term insufficiency of food this method goes beyond more commonly used measures of caloric consumption to incorporate vulnerability elements of food insecurity as well as the deliberate actions of household decision makers when faced with food insufficiency

risk behavior and rational expectations in the u s broiler market this study examines the empirical implications of extending the rational expectations hypothesis reh to include price uncertainty a general estimation framework that incorporates both the restrictions on structural parameters and the variance covariance terms is developed garch time series processes are used to generate time varying expectations of both the means and the variances of exogenous variables the empirical application is with a quarterly model of the u s broiler industry the results indicate that the rational expectation of price variance is an important determinant of broiler supply a formal test indicates that the restrictions implied by the reh cannot be rejected

measuring oligopsony power with shadow prices u s markets for pulpwood and sawlogs empirical estimation of input market power hindered by problems in measuring an input s value of marginal product vmp by estimating a variable profit function system however one can infer a factor s vmp through its shadow price this technique is used here to specify a structural equation system which is estimated using time series data for the u s sawmilling and paper industries to empirically measure the degree of oligopsony power for sawlog and pulpwood inputs respectively results evaluated at sample means indicate that pulpwood markets are more oligopsonistic than sawlog markets though both perform closer to perfect competition than monopsony time trends for market power differ for each product and perfect competition cannot be rejected for sawlogs in later years copyright 1995 by mit press

optimal cartel trigger price strategies abstract a dynamical model of industry equilibrium is described in which a cartel deters deviations from collusive output levels by threatening to produce at cournot quantities for a period of fixed duration whenever the market price falls below some trigger price in this model firms can observe only their own production level and a common market price the market demand curve is assumed to have a stochastic component so that an unexpectedly low price may signal either deviations from collusive output levels or a downward demand shock

the comparison between ad valorem and specific taxation under imperfect competition abstract this paper compares ad valorem and specific taxation in two models of oligopoly with and without free entry predominantly ad valorem taxation implies a relatively low consumer price high tax revenue and when entry is precluded low profits ad valorem taxation dominates specific taxation from the welfare perspective the set of circumstances under which with free entry specific taxation raises welfare is a strict subset of that in which ad valorem taxation is welfare improving and in both models the maximisation of consumer welfare subject to a binding revenue constraint requires maximum reliance on ad valorem taxation

free entry and social inefficiency our goal is to provide a simple yet general exposition of the conditions under which the number of entrants in a free entry equilibrium is excessive insufficient or optimal our analysis compares the number of firms that enter a market when there is free entry with the number that would be desired by a social planner who is unable to control the behavior of firms once they are in the market that is we consider the second best problem of choosing the welfare maximizing number of firms while we take as given their noncompetitive behavior after entry we demonstrate that the crucial conditions for establishing the presence of an entry bias can be stated quite simply in terms of the outcome of the postentry game played by entrants in contrast to previous work we do not need to model this postentry game explicitly

capitals and capabilities a framework for analyzing peasant viability rural livelihoods and poverty abstract on the basis of themes emerging in current debates on rural development in latin america this paper develops an analytical framework for analyzing rural livelihoods in terms of their sustainability and their implications for rural poverty the framework argues that our analyses of rural livelihoods need to understand them in terms of a people s access to five types of capital asset b the ways in which they combine and transform those assets in the building of livelihoods that as far as possible meet their material and their experiential needs c the ways in which people are able to expand their asset bases through engaging with other actors through relationships governed by the logics of the state market and civil society and d the ways in which they are able to deploy and enhance their capabilities both to make living more meaningful and to change the dominant rules and relationships governing the ways in which resources are controlled distributed and transformed in society particular attention is paid to the importance of social capital as an asset through which people are able to widen their access to resources and other actors

the effect of farm supply shifts on concentration and market power in the food processing sector in this paper we examine the marginal impact of changing farm supply on the market structure of the downstream food processing sector we develop a theoretical model that allows for cost differences among processors and endogenizes downstream entry and exit comparative statics results are consistent with several well established trends in the food processing sector in particular the analysis demonstrates that increasing concentration in the food processing sector is consistent with decreasing market power indeed we find that when the farm supply curve shifts outward an increase in concentration can only occur when there is a decrease in market power

price behavior in a dynamic oligopsony washington processing potatoes punishment strategies are necessary to sustain a collusive oligopsony in a repeated game context when demand is uncertain and only market variables are observable this article proposes a test for tacit collusion among potato processors in washington state using a dynamic regime switching model estimated with a finite mixture method the results support the existence of punishment and collusive regimes and show the welfare losses due to anti competitive behavior on the part of processors to be significant processors oligopsony power is enhanced by higher domestic production imports and existing stocks but it is ameliorated by high capacity utilization rates and exports copyright 2001 oxford university press

are oil shocks inflationary asymmetric and nonlinear specifications versus changes in regime this paper identifies a structural break in core u s inflation phillips curves such that oil prices contributed substantially before 1981 but since that time pass through has been negligible this characterization is robust to a variety of re specifications and fits the data better than asymmetric and nonlinear oil price alternatives evidence does not support the hypotheses that declining energy intensity or deregulation of energy producing and consuming industries played an important role monetary policy did not itself become less accommodative of oil shocks but may have helped create a regime where inflation is less sensitive to price shocks more generally

can exchange rates forecast commodity prices we show that commodity currency exchange rates have surprisingly robust power in predicting global commodity prices both in sample and out of sample and against a variety of alternative benchmarks this result is of particular interest to policy makers given the lack of deep forward markets in many individual commodities and broad aggregate commodity indices in particular we also explore the reverse relationship commodity prices forecasting exchange rates but find it to be notably less robust we offer a theoretical resolution based on the fact that exchange rates are strongly forward looking whereas commodity price fluctuations are typically more sensitive to short term demand imbalances

effects of forward sales on spot markets pre commitment sales and prices for fresh strawberries increasingly agricultural markets are vertically coordinated often a thinning spot market coexists with coordinated transactions raising the question of how private coordination affects the market as a whole one of the greatest challenges when analyzing such market level effects is obtaining information on private transactions we utilize publicly available data to evaluate how informal contracts in the fresh strawberry market affect spot market prices using a generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedastic in mean garch m model we find that these informal contracts increased spot prices as argued by some industry members while the effect on spot price volatility varied by production region

market transparency and market structure the livestock mandatory reporting act of 1999 the premise of the livestock mandatory reporting act of 1999 is that enhanced transparency promotes competition this article provides a theoretical study of the consequences of such transparency for the structure conduct and performance of the livestock industry i conclude that the usefulness of the act to the livestock industry may not be in the value of reported information to feeders as the supporters of the act claim rather by forcing packers to pool information at negligible marginal cost the act may foster more competitive conduct in the procurement of livestock copyright 2003 oxford university press

should central banks respond to movements in asset prices in recent decades asset booms and busts have been important factors in macroeconomic fluctuations in both industrial and developing countries in light of this experience how if at all should central bankers respond to asset price volatility we have addressed this issue in previous work bernanke and gertler 1999 the context of our earlier study was the relatively new but increasingly popular monetary policy framework known as inflation targeting see e g bernanke and frederic mishkin 1997 in an inflation targeting framework publicly announced medium term inflation targets provide a nominal anchor for monetary policy while allowing the central bank some flexibility to help stabilize the real economy in the short run the inflation targeting approach gives a specific answer to the question of how central bankers should respond to asset prices changes in asset prices should affect monetary policy only to the extent that they affect the central bank s forecast of inflation to a first approximation once the predictive content of asset prices for inflation has been accounted for there should be no additional response of monetary policy to assetprice fluctuations in use now for about a decade inflationtargeting has generally performed well in practice however so far this approach has not often been stress tested by large swings in asset prices our earlier research employed simulations of a small calibrated macroeconomic model to examine how an inflation targeting policy defined as one in which the central bank s instrument interest rate responds primarily to changes in expected inflation might fare in the face of a boom and bust cycle in asset prices we found that an aggressive inflationtargeting policy rule in our simulations one in which the coefficient relating the instrument interest rate to expected inflation is 2 0 substantially stabilizes both output and inflation in scenarios in which a bubble in stock prices develops and then collapses as well as in scenarios in which technology shocks drive stock prices intuitively inflation targeting central banks automatically accommodate productivity gains that lift stock prices while offsetting purely speculative increases or decreases in stock values whose primary effects are through aggregate demand conditional on a strong policy response to expected inflation we found little if any additional gains from allowing an independent response of central bank policy to the level of asset prices in our view there are good reasons outside of our formal model to worry about attempts by central banks to influence asset prices including the fact that as history has shown the effects of such attempts on market psychology are dangerously unpredictable hence we concluded that inflationtargeting central banks need not respond to asset prices except insofar as they affect the inflation forecast in the spirit of recent work on robust control the exercises in our earlier paper analyzed the performance of policy rules in worst case discussants robert shiller yale university glenn rudebusch federal reserve bank of san francisco kenneth rogoff harvard university

a dynamic duopoly model with asymmetric information this paper investigates the impact of asymmetric information on the set of equilibria of a two period duopoly game with price competition it turns out that all admissible sequential equilibria of this game share a collusive character i e ex ante expected profits for a firm of any type are higher than in the complete information case for small uncertainties the results are asymmetric a small probability of a good type firm does not make much difference on the set of equilibrium payoffs but a small probability of a bad type firm does these results survive the introduction of kohlberg and martens 1986 stability concept copyright 1990 by blackwell publishing ltd

fair trade or trade fair international food trade and cross border macronutrient flows abstract this study examines global food trade from a nutritional perspective paying particular attention to its implications for food security in low income countries by describing food trade in terms of the quantities of three essential macronutrients carbohydrates lipids and proteins embedded in food the analysis goes beyond a simple description of trade values quantities or caloric content as is common in the literature furthermore the study provides estimates of the implicit price of each macronutrient their evolution over time and their implications in terms of north south food trade the data show that over the 1996 2014 period the volume of macronutrients exchanged on international markets has more than doubled with carbohydrates accounting for over 60 of trade flows but proteins and lipids growing at a faster pace proteins were found to be the most expensive macronutrient followed by lipids and carbohydrates in general macronutrients embedded in animal and processed products are more expensive than those in vegetal and unprocessed food the results also suggest that the participation in international food trade has positive effects on low income countries aggregate food availability and food access two pillars of food security indeed low income countries register a net inflow of all macronutrients and take advantage of nutritional arbitrages available on international food markets due to macronutrients price differentials

famine and household coping strategies abstract households faced with risks to their entitlement to food will plan strategically to minimize their impact the task of doing this will be particularly demanding during famines this paper reviews the evidence on household strategies for coping with famine in africa and identifies some distinctive patterns in these strategies which can be used to examine household objectives at times of crisis the management of resources to meet these objectives and limits to the effectiveness of coping strategies in particular it examines the role of asset management and trade offs between maintaining current food consumption levels and protecting the future income generating capacity of the household

demand shifts and market structure in free entry oligopoly equilibria abstract this papers examines the structural implications of demand shifts in free entry oligopoly equilibria the model generalizes the conjectural variations framework to consider asymmetric firm conjectures allows for the possibility of cost differences across firms and endogenizes conditions of entry and exit in the industry in non competitive environments changes in incumbent output and industry profitability are inversely related to changes in the equilibrium price following a demand shift in response to rotations of demand through the equilibrium point changes in profitability are positively related to changes in industry concentration and when marginal costs are non decreasing inversely related to changes in market power

duopoly information equilibrium cournot and bertrand abstract in a duopoly model where firms have private information about an uncertain linear demand it is shown that if the goods are substitutes not to share information is a dominant strategy for each firm in bertrand cournot competition if the goods are complements the result is reversed furthermore the following welfare results are obtained 1 i with substitutes in cournot competition the market outcome is never optimal with respect to information sharing but it may be optimal in bertrand competition if the products are good substitutes with complements the market outcome is always optimal 2 ii bertrand competition is more efficient than cournot competition 3 iii the private value of information to the firms is always positive but the social value of information is positive in cournot and negative in bertrand competition

analysis of a supply control program under uncertainty and imperfect competition chinese cabbage in taiwan researchers have often attributed the farm wholesale price spread after adjusting for marketing costs as compensation for marketing firms risk bearing however price spreads in excess of marketing costs can also be due to marketing firms exercise of market power in settings where both imperfect competition and marketer risk aversion are plausible a modeling framework must be sufficiently general to accommodate both types of behavior this article develops and estimates such a model in the context of fresh produce marketing and develops the implications for analysis of supply control programs the model is applied to the production and marketing of chinese cabbage in taiwan and specifically to the analysis of supply control programs implemented in this industry by the taiwanese government the empirical results provide little support for the hypothesis that marketing firms exhibit risk averse behavior but they do show that marketing firms exercise oligopsony power in procurement of the product from farmers and that this power is positively related to the quantity supplied in each market period this provides a heretofore unexplored impetus for supply controls intended to raise producer incomes however such controls are also rendered less effective by imperfect competition because marketing firms capture part of the benefits from supply reduction

market structure and price cost margins in a paper that has become a standard reference in the structure conductperformance approach to industrial economics cowling and waterson 1976 developed a theoretical rationale for expecting industry profitability to be positively correlated with the level of concentration their model based on a simple algebraic description of oligopoly behaviour has been interpreted as providing a justification for the common empirical practice of cross industry regression analysis of price cost margins in terms of concentration levels in the present paper we show that on further examination this model implies a joint determination of margins and concentration this provides some interesting comparative static results of relevance to inter industry differences in concentration levels equally however it leads to various cautionary insights concerning the meaning of price cost margin versus concentration regressions

the seed and agricultural biotechnology industries in india an analysis of industry structure competition and policy options since the late 1980s technological advances and policy reforms have created new opportunities for private sector investment in india s seed and agricultural biotechnology industries these changes have had a significant impact on cotton yields and output in india but less so for rice and wheat the country s main cereal staples for which yield growth rates are tending toward stagnation this analysis examines the structures of these industries their potential effects on competition and innovation and the policies that may improve both industry performance and the delivery of new productivity enhancing technologies to india s cereal production systems our findings suggest that more substantive policy reforms are needed to encourage further innovation reduce regulatory uncertainty and encourage firm and industry level growth while continued public spending on agricultural research is needed to support technological change

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

market and welfare effects of the u s livestock mandatory reporting act author affiliation kenneth njoroge department of accounting the fuqua school of business duke university box 90120 durham nc 27708 0120 usa kn14 duke eduamalia yiannaka department of agricultural economics 314d filley hall university of nebraska lincoln lincoln ne 68583 0922 usa yiannaka unl edukonstantinos giannakas department of agricultural economics 216 filley hall university of nebraska lincoln lincoln ne 68583 0922 usa kgiannakas unl eduazzeddine m azzam department of agricultural economics 103b filley hall university of nebraska lincoln lincoln ne 68583 0922 usa aazzam1 unl edu corresponding author acknowledgment senior authorship is shared authors names appear in reverse seniority order 1 introductionthe livestock mandatory reporting act the act was enacted in 2001 to provide market participants with information on all cash and noncash transactions reported by packers to the agricultural marketing service ams on a daily basis the information is aggregated under specific confidentiality guidelines1 to preserve the anonymity of the source2 and published in the mandatory livestock and meat market news reports reports 3 ams is responsible for setting the confidentiality guidelines as well as for enforcing the act as stated in the act federal register 2000 the reports intend to provide information that can be readily understood by producers packers and other market participants improve the price and supply reporting services of the department of agriculture and encourage competition in the marketplace for livestock and livestock products the rationale is that as more animals have been purchased under marketing arrangements neither the arrangements nor the final purchase prices are publicly disclosed 4about two years after the act went into effect schroeder grunwald and ward 2002 reviewed the early literature on livestock mandatory reporting lmr a consensus appeared to be forming that while lmr could be beneficial by reducing uncertainty and increasing competition in cattle markets revealing too much information about rival pricing could facilitate collusion and reduce competition among packers schroeder grunwald and ward 2002 p 11 the uncertainty reducing effect of lmr was deduced from two experimental studies by anderson et al 1998 and bastian koontz and menkhaus 2001 in the first experiment price and quantity information in the fed cattle market simulated through the fed cattle market simulator fcms 5 was varied and market outcomes were observed uncertainty measured by price dispersion was found to increase with the amount and type of information withheld in the second experiment also using the fcms market participants were provided with price and quantity information on cattle sold through the spot markets as well as through forward contracts the authors observed a substantial reduction in the variance of forward contract prices the effect of the forward market information on the variance of spot prices was negative but not statistically significant maintaining the hypothesis that mandatory reporting reduces uncertainty through the provision of more information azzam 2003 studied the effects of the reduction in uncertainty on the structure conduct and performance of livestock markets azzam s theoretical findings suggest that in a setting where cattle feeders and packers are risk averse and packers hold consistent conjectures increased transparency due to mandatory reporting promotes competition and results in higher livestock prices however since increased transparency can make it easier for packers to collude wachenheim and devuyst 2001 azzam s assumption of consistent conjectures is restrictive because it rules out the possibility of collusion njoroge 2003 provides a formal model of collusion that is in line with the arguments in wachenheim and devuyst 2001

changes in beef packers market power after the livestock mandatory price reporting act an agent based auction controversy remains about the effectiveness of the 1999 livestock mandatory price reporting act mpra we determine the likely changes in beef packers market power after the mpra by using an agent based first price common value auction past research has employed cournot models but we use an auction model which more closely resembles the actual cattle procurement process we find that feeders benefit from the mpra regardless of whether price uncertainty decreases for packers and or feeders if the packers price uncertainty is reduced the feeder benefits from an increase in competition between the packers if the feeder s price uncertainty is reduced the feeder benefits from imposing more accurate reserve prices copyright 2013 oxford university press

oligopoly and welfare a unified presentation with applications to trade and development abstract we develop a unified sequence of models to examine the determinants of price output profitability and concentration for different kinds of oligopolistic market we relate various magnitudes of significance to judges of welfare and to policy makers such as consumer surplus profit or added benefits of employment or trade surplus to observable magnitudes such as the size and concentration of the market it emerges that various appropriately formulated herfindahl indices are useful in several of these relations we attempt to present results in a way that is useful for empirical investigations and pay particular attention to applications in trade and development

liberalization and food price distributions arch m evidence from madagascar abstract there is no well articulated theory of how stochastic food prices respond to economic liberalization measures a surprising oversight in the vast literature on market oriented reforms this paper presents reduced form estimates of the effects of liberalization measures on food commodity prices in madagascar using autoregressive conditional heteroskedastic in mean arch m methods the data indicate that the short term effects of liberalization on the mean and variance of food prices vary substantially by commodity region and season in the long term liberalization increases both the mean and the variance of food prices the abandonment of a quantity rationed state marketing system with administrative pricing also leads to smaller inter regional and interseasonal differences in mean food prices and a sharp increase in price autocorrelation real exchange rates have pronounced positive effects on mean food prices but these effects emerge indirectly rather than directly through induced changes to border parity prices

inventories and public information in private negotiation a laboratory market study using laboratory markets this research investigates the impacts of reporting different kinds of aggregated trade information to buyers and sellers who conduct transactions through bilateral private negotiation there are a limited number of bargaining rounds or matches between buyer and seller pairs sellers hold a perishable inventory before negotiations begin we find that knowledge of trades along with price improves the coordination and bargaining position of buyers trade prices are lower and buyer earnings are higher relative to the no information treatment or when just past quantities or just past prices are reported market efficiency declines as public information is reported copyright 2007 oxford university press

the dynamic causality between commodity prices inflation and output in china a bootstrap rolling window approach in this article we empirically study the time varying bilateral causality between commodity prices inflation and output in china we first perform a series of parameter stability tests and find s

risk averse duopolists and voluntary information transmission this paper considers the incentives for risk averse firms to share their private information they show that the introduction of risk aversion in some cases reverses the result in the literature that no such incentives exist further they show that the output level of risk averse cournot duopolists is increasing in the quality of their private information and decreasing in their perception of risk copyright 1989 by blackwell publishing ltd

capacity and competition empirical evidence on uk panel data following d kreps and j scheinkman 1983 it is common to view the difference between cournot and bertrand competition as depending on production capacity bertrand undercutting is only feasible if firms have capacity to serve the market gained if firms are capacity constrained the cournot model is more appropriate this paper tests the capacity and competition idea by looking at the relationship between profits and capacity constraints if capacity constrained firms become more cournot like it should be positive using survey data on capacity constraints merged into a panel industry data set for the united kingdom the authors find a robust positive relationship copyright 1994 by blackwell publishing ltd

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

efficiency of the multiplant multiproduct firm a general framework is provided for assessing the technology cost and efficient scale of a multiplant multiproduct firm we show sufficient conditions for the existence of a plant cost function and necessary and sufficient conditions for using plant level data to draw exact firm level cost inferences we also distinguish between plant and input nonjointness and show the optimal relation between plant level and firm level cost elasticity in a multiproduct setting the framework is applied to a vegetable processing cooperative which is found to operate below its efficient scale

commodity taxation and imperfect competition a note on the effects of entry abstract this paper looks at the effects of allowing the number of firms to vary in seade s model of oligopoly and taxation we show that the normative and positive consequences of a specific commodity tax are affected by entry in significant ways

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

marketing margins market power and price uncertainty this paper provides a conceptual and empirical framework for analyzing marketing margins in a noncompetitive food processing industry facing output price uncertainty the framework allows the decomposition of observed margins into components reflecting the marginal cost of the processing industry oligopoly oligopsony price distortions and an output price risk component the empirical procedure is applied to a time series of spreads between wholesale pork prices and farm prices of market hogs the principal finding is that while farm wholesale margins are more consistent with competitive performance now than they were fifteen years ago the output price risk component persisted throughout the sample period

competition in the us meatpacking industry is it history the us meatpacking industry has become concentrated to a degree not experienced since the days of the beef trust a century ago a number of mainstream studies have investigated if such concentration has been detrimental to competition just as earlier studies may have helped shape competition policy towards meatpacking a century ago contemporary studies have made their way into current discussions and may shape competition policy at the turn of this century this paper asks whether or not contemporary studies are useful in informing competition policy after comparing how competition looks from the econometric vantage point with how it looks from the vantage point of the industry s 300 yr history this article concludes that mainstream studies are more useful for a competition policy targeting conduct rather than structure

the effect of barge and ocean freight price volatility in international grain markets this paper looks at the potential role of time varying volatility of mississippi river barge and ocean freight prices on commodity prices in illinois at the us gulf and in rotterdam using a vector error correction garch in mean model the model is used to infer the extent to which transportation price risk affects price dynamics in international grain markets results from a simulation exercise indicate that both barge and ocean price volatility influence grain prices but barge price volatility tends to have a greater impact on grain prices and marketing margins than that arising from ocean price volatility consistent with most studies that evaluate the role of risk in marketing channels results here suggest that a reduction in barge rate risk would reduce marketing margins between illinois and the us gulf and between the us gulf and rotterdam the existence of an ocean freight futures contract coupled with the lack of a futures contract for barge rates may be partially responsible for the finding that barge rates have a significant influence on grain prices and contribute most to wide marketing margins found throughout the international grain marketing system

toward a food secure future ensuring food security for sustainable human development in sub saharan africa food security remains a top development priority and global concern it is enshrined in the 2030 agenda for sustainable development in sustainable development goal two food security is also a core component of the human development and capability paradigm since food access and entitlements are critical for reinforcing essential human capabilities in introducing this special issue this paper argues that agriculture is central to improving food security and reducing poverty in africa it suggests that realizing the potential of agriculture in africa requires rapid increases in land productivity and increases in agricultural yields a science based approach that integrates gender and sustainability is critical to meet this goal through the design and implementation of policies that improve the availability farm inputs and farm technology the paper concludes by introducing the papers in this special issue

asymmetric farm retail price transmission and market power a new test a finite mixture model is used to estimate farm retail price transmission in the us fresh strawberry market results suggest two distinct pricing regimes associated with off and peak harvesting seasons the market power parameter is significant in the peak harvest regime but not in the off peak regime moreover price changes are transmitted completely throughout the marketing channel in the off peak regime when the market power parameter is zero but not in the peak harvest regime when the market power parameter is positive this suggests that produce buyers are more apt to exercise market power when farm supplies are abundant than when they are scarce and that the exercise of such power causes the farm retail price linkage to become asymmetric

supply analysis in an oligopsony model primary agricultural markets are often characterized by oligopsony this paper investigates the effect of an agricultural product supply shift on the equilibrium prices and quantities of farm products purchased by food processors and on profits of food processors the principal comparative static result indicates that under oligopsony qualitative implications of a disturbance in the supply of raw input differ from that under perfect competition and monopsony effects of other disturbances are identical in sign to the perfectly competitive case although magnitudes may differ implications for supply estimation and agricultural policy analysis are briefly discussed

a critical assessment of supply demand models of agricultural trade we offer a critical assessment of static deterministic reduced form supply demand sd models of agricultural trade a commonly used and well documented model has significant limitations no explicit treatment of factor mobility between farm and nonfarm sectors nonzero profits in some sectors no substitutability among feedstuffs in livestock sectors violation of the law of one price small marketing margins for some commodities and incomplete coverage of the agricultural sector such limitations have significant impacts on the magnitude and direction of projected world price and welfare changes we believe agricultural policy analysis should first focus on the remediation of these limitations before proceeding to more complex issues like dynamics and uncertainty

oil shocks and aggregate macroeconomic behavior the role of monetary policy a recent paper by bernanke gertler and watson 1997 suggests that monetary policy could be used to eliminate any recessionary consequences of an oil price shock this paper challenges this conclusion on two grounds first we question whether the federal reserve actually has the power to implement such a policy for example we consider it unlikely that additional money creation would have succeeded in reducing the fed funds rate by 900 basis points relative to the values seen in 1974 second we point out that the size of the effect that bernanke gertler and watson attribute to oil shocks is substantially smaller than that reported by other researchers primarily due to their choice of a shorter lag length than that used by other researchers we offer evidence in favor of the longer lag length employed by previous research and show that under this specification even the aggressive federal reserve policies proposed would not have succeeded in averting a downturn