discounting and divergence of opinion the objective of this paper is to adopt a general equilibrium model and determine the socially efficient discount factor risk free rate and discount rate when there are heterogeneous anticipations about the growth of the economy as well as heterogeneous time preference rates among others we tackle the following questions is the socially efficient discount factor an arithmetic average of the individual subjectively anticipated discount factors more generally can the arrow debreu prices the risk free rates the subjectively expected socially efficient discount factors and discount rates be obtained as an average of the individual subjectively anticipated ones can beliefs dispersion be analyzed as a sort of additional risk or uncertainty leading to possibly lower discount rates is it socially efficient when diversity of opinion is taken into account to reduce the discount rate per year for more distant horizons if so what is the trajectory of the decline

determination of focal pricing regions for u s fed cattle concerns over the imperfect market structure of the beef sector arise due to potential price discovery impacts this study presents an effective way of providing information on price discovery that can be used to indicate regions within which prices follow similar dynamics a state space model was fit to fourteen years of weekly data on nineteen price series from u s fed cattle markets tight regional market price interrelationships were discovered indicating that in general prices cannot move independently in the long run the dynamics of the system of prices revealed the existence of between five and seven focal price discovery regions

effects of packers inventory and market power on price adjustments in the u s beef industry this study examines effects of packers inventory and market power on their price adjustment behaviour in the u s beef industry econometric model used in the study allows inventory and market pow

heterogeneous patience bargaining power and investment in future public goods in many environmental contexts including climate change mitigation agents face investment opportunities that have shared but greatly delayed benefits efficient levels of aggregate investment therefore require collective action but they are also highly sensitive to the choice of discount rate motivated by empirical evidence that suggests discount rates vary considerably this paper investigates the impact of heterogeneity in discount rates on sharing of investment costs an application of the canonical bargaining model shows that the larger share of the costs gradually shifts from impatient to patient agents as the time horizon increases

a conjectural variations model of reduced japanese milk price supports conjectural variations are estimated to determine the degree of imperfection in the japanese milk market estimated conjectural variations indicate that the japanese milk market is imperfectly competitive but is becoming more competitive our comparative static analysis indicates that when the milk support price is reduced the fluid milk price will decline less under the current imperfectly competitive structure than it would under a competitive structure

approaches and methods for the econometric analysis of market power a survey and empirical comparison this study discusses two widely used approaches in the new empirical industrial organization neio literature and examines the strengths and weaknesses of the production theoretic approach pta and the general identification method gim for the econometric analysis of market power in agricultural and food markets we provide a framework that may help researchers to evaluate and improve structural models of market power starting with the specification of the approaches in question we compare published empirical studies of market power with respect to the choice of the applied approach functional forms estimation methods and derived estimates of the degree of market power thereafter we use our framework to evaluate several structural models based on pta and gim to measure oligopsony power in the ukrainian dairy industry the pta based results suggest that the estimated parameters of oligopsony power are significantly different from zero while gim based results do not indicate any evidence of oligopsony market power in the ukrainian dairy industry moreover estimations results vary substantially due to the employed estimation procedure

environment market share and market power in this paper we develop a process model relating market share to firm profits in particular we specify average price and average cost equations as a function of previous year market share position changes in market share environmental conditions and interactions of environmental conditions with the lagged market position and market share change variables we estimate these equations using pims data after controlling for unobservable factors our results suggest that firms with high market shares derive no extra market power benefits except if they operate in environments with little buyer power instead environmental factors and changes in market share most strongly influence price and cost an analysis of the market share associated with maximal firm profits indicates that for the majority of firms in our sample steadily increasing market share does not always associate with increasing profits giving credence to the proposition that more market share is not always better

testing oligopoly power in domestic and export markets empirical applications of testing oligopoly power in different industries are based on the new empirical industrial organization neio approach parallel to this approach theoretical and empirical applications to testing oligopoly power in international trade have also emerged a shortcoming of these approaches is that they do not account for the possibility that an industry which is active in the domestic and international markets may exhibit oligopoly power in both markets we extend the existing models by simultaneously accounting for domestic and international components of four industries in testing for oligopoly power we found that in some cases industries exhibit oligopoly behaviour in either or both markets

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

information technology effects on firm performance as measured by tobin s q despite increasing anecdotal evidence that information technology it assets contribute to firm performance and future growth potential of firms the empirical results relating it investments to firm performance measures have been equivocal however the bulk of the studies have relied exclusively on accounting based measures of firm performance which largely tend to ignore it s contribution to performance dimensions such as strategic flexibility and intangible value in this paper we use tobin s q a financial market based measure of firm performance and examine the association between it investments and firm q values after controlling for a variety of industry factors and firm specific variables the results based on data from 1988 1993 indicate that in all of the five years the inclusion of the it expenditure variable in the model increased the variance explained in q significantly the results also showed that for all five years it investments had a significantly positive association with tobin s q value our results are consistent with the notion that it contributes to a firm s future performance potential which a forward looking measure such as the q is better able to capture

long forward and zero coupon rates can never fall in frictionless markets having no arbitrage the asymptotic zero coupon rate never falls the same is true of the long forward rate the long par coupon rate can rise and fall due to forward rate movements at short maturities this article relates the three types of interest rates and formalizes and proves the impossibility results for falling asymptotic rates these results can be tested in a parametric term structure specification that is rich enough to identify a time series of long rates the results show that it is not possible to specify arbitrarily the long forward or zero coupon rate process copyright 1996 by university of chicago press

initiating a sustained diffusion of wind power the role of public private partnerships in spain the literature on policy approaches for the market support of renewable electricity is dominated by narrow conceptualizations of policy referring mostly to direct instruments for economic feasibility such approaches often led to unsatisfactory explanations of diffusion results this is the case of wind power diffusion in spain the success of which is typically credited to the feed in tariff instrument this paper offers an alternative explanatory account for wind power diffusion in spain it is argued that diffusion can be explained by a less obvious policy of stimulating investments by means of public private partnerships ppps the three legal frameworks for economic feasibility applicable up to 2004 harbored high economic risks although projects could have high profitability because of generous investment subsidies up to mid 1990s most investments were based on ppps to address the risk perceptions of early investors fully private partnerships now dominate investments though ppps have not disappeared next to winning investors confidence the ppp policy led to an investment culture whereby partnership investments dominate by 2000 95 7 of the installed wind capacity was owned by partnerships and only 4 3 by individual companies partnerships invest in larger projects have ambitious investment plans and these lead to a high diffusion tempo

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

modelling upstream and downstream market power in bilateral oligopoly abstractthis article develops a general model that estimates market power exertion in a bilateral market relationship for processors and retailers where each may also have market power in their primary input market and output markets respectively monte carlo experiments are used to generate industry data for market structures such as perfect competition monopoly monopsony bilateral imperfect competition with an integrated processor retailer bilateral imperfect competition with separate processor and retailer and bilateral imperfect competition with four adjacent upstream and downstream markets then new empirical industrial organization models are estimated using the data with models that match the market structure under which the data were generated true and with models that reflect alternative market structures alternative the general model is derived using the production function approach without imposing the fixed proportion assumption monte carlo simulation results indicate that the gen

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

an equilibrium displacement approach to oligopoly market analysis an application to trade in the korean infant formula market this article uses an equilibrium displacement model edm to assess the impact of a change in trade policy in the korean infant formula market that is assumed to be oligopolistic domestic oligopolists compete in a market for a homogenous good with importing firms who enjoy the same level of market power as the domestic producers within an edm framework we investigate how the market adjusts to a new equilibrium in response to an external policy shock that improves access to foreign goods our empirical work consists of two steps we first econometrically estimate the market demand elasticity and market power parameter then using these estimates we simulate our edm model to assess the distributional effects of tariff cuts and other changes in marginal cost simulation results show that with a lower market price and increased consumption the change in consumer surplus resulting from tariff reduction is unambiguously positive but that the change in social welfare can be in either direction depending on who receives market rents associated with imports when importing firms are domestic the domestic welfare change is definitely positive however in the case of foreign importing firms the direction of the welfare change crucially depends on the demand elasticity

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

agricultural trade liberalization and economic development the role of downstream market power a model is developed to characterize the vertically linked and concentrated nature of developed country food markets this model is then parameterized and used to simulate the effects of varying food market structures on the benefits to developing country exporters of agricultural commodities from trade liberalization by developed countries results demonstrate that even relatively modest departures from perfect competition can cause much of the benefits from trade liberalization to flow to marketing firms instead of producers in the developing country the distributional effects under downstream market power differ significantly from the perfectly competitive case and may result somewhat paradoxically in developing countries receiving a lower share of the total value added within the food chain as trade reform occurs

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

community perspectives of wind energy in australia the application of a justice and community fairness framework to increase social acceptance decisions concerning the siting of infrastructure developments or the use of natural resources have the potential to damage a community s social well being if the outcomes are perceived to be unfair justice is accepted as central to the well functioning of society with fairness being an expectation in day to day interactions outcomes that are perceived to be unfair can result in protests damaged relationships and divided communities particularly when decisions are made which benefit some sections of the community at the perceived expense of others through empirical research using a wind farm pilot study community perceptions of a community consultation process are explored using procedural justice principles to evaluate fairness findings from the pilot study indicate that perceptions of fairness do influence how people perceive the legitimacy of the outcome and that a fairer process will increase acceptance of the outcome a key research finding was that different sections of a community are likely to be influenced by different aspects of justice namely by outcome fairness outcome favourability and process fairness based on this finding a community fairness framework was developed which has potential application in community consultation to increase social acceptance of the outcome

wind power implementation the nature of public attitudes equity and fairness instead of backyard motives abstract public attitudes anywhere in europe show moderate to strong support for the implementation of renewable energy nevertheless planning wind power developments appears to be a complicated matter in most countries the problems that have to be dealt with during decision making processes on the siting of wind turbines are usually referred to as mere communication problems however public attitudes towards wind power are fundamentally different from attitudes towards wind farms this gap causes misunderstandings about the nature of public support for renewables in particular where planners easily assume support for renewables can be generated by information campaigns emphasising the environmental benefits whereas opposition to renewable energy schemes can be explained by a selfish not in my backyard attitude both explanations used by planners authorities and unfortunately by many scholars are falsified furthermore policies that still take this common knowledge for granted can have negative consequences for the implementation rates of renewables visual evaluation of the impact of wind power on landscape values is by far the dominant factor in explaining why some are opposed to wind power and others are supporting it moreover feelings about equity and fairness appear the determinants of backyard motives instead of selfishness

a look on the cost side market share and the competitive environment in this paper we develop a model relating market share to average costs we start with a theoretical model of the factors that affect the firm s average cost curve partitioning these factors into a measurable firm and competitive environment characteristics and b unobserved factors that are either fixed random or follow a first order autoregressive process we then link this theoretical model to an empirical model in which we specify three average cost equations for the organizational areas of purchasing production and marketing main effects for initial lagged market share position as well as their interactions with factors characterizing the firm s competitive environment represent the variables of key theoretical interest in our equations we estimate these equations using pims data and control for fixed contemporaneous and autoregressive unobservable factors our results suggest that market share can often lead to market power in the form of lower average costs however the firm s operating environment greatly moderates the effect of market share on average cost in particular we find that market share position only leads to lower average costs when the organizational unit operates in a competitive environment that gives it both motivation and ability to realize power from its market share position

meatpacker conduct in fed cattle pricing an investigation of oligopsony power market power in regional fed cattle markets is measured with an econometric model which links behavior of the margin between boxed beef and fed cattle prices to an economic model of conduct a noncooperative game theoretic model suggests that for tacitly collusive pricing behavior to persist in equilibrium oligopsonists must follow a discontinuous pricing strategy meatpackers pay low prices for cattle during cooperative phases and purchase cattle aggressively during noncooperative phases tests for cooperative noncooperative conduct and measures of market power are presented fed cattle prices in four direct trade regions in the central united states are examined evidence of cooperative noncooperative conduct is present in all markets but has declined over time varying conduct across markets and over time suggests it is important to continue monitoring fed cattle markets to assure a competitive environment

aggregation of heterogeneous time preferences we examine an economy whose consumers have different discount factors for utility possibly not exponential we characterize the properties of efficient allocations of resources and of the shadow prices that would decentralize such allocations we show in particular that the representative agent has a decreasing discount rate when as is usually posited all of a group s members have a constant discount rate and decreasing absolute risk aversion preferences we also identify conditions that lead the representative agent to have a rate of impatience that decreases with gross domestic product per capita

technological change and economies of scale in u s poultry processing this article uses a unique data set provided by the census bureau and a translog cost function to empirically examine technological change in the u s poultry industry results reveal substantial scale economies that show no evidence of diminishing with plant size and that are much greater than those realized in cattle and hog slaughter findings suggest that consolidation is likely to continue particularly if demand growth diminishes and that controlling for plant product mix is critical to accurate cost estimates

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

the cost and duration of cash balance pension plans controversy about the fairness of early transitions from traditional defined benefit plans to cash balance plans may have overshadowed the subtleties of funding a cash balance pension liability because crediting rates of cash balance liabilities float with market rates the same techniques used to value and hedge floating rate bonds provide the present value cost and effective duration of a cash balance liability the present value cost of funding a liability varies dramatically across the menu of irs sanctioned crediting alternatives for example given the yield curve from november 15 1999 the present value per 1 00 of cash balance of funding a liability paying off 30 years from now varies between 0 90 and 1 48 the effective duration of a cash balance liability also varies dramatically according to various crediting rates the effective duration is typically positive but much shorter than the expected time until retirement or other payment and depending on the choice of crediting rate can vary

determinants of oligopsony power the haitian coffee case abstract this paper investigates the determinants of oligopsony power exerted by coffee exporters in haiti it develops and estimates a two equation model with cross parameter restrictions one equation for the lerner index of oligopsony and the other for the residual supply function facing exporters empirical results indicate that both institutional arrangements and domestic market conditions have significantly shaped oligopsony power

inefficient dynamic portfolio strategies or how to throw away a million dollars in the stock market a number of portfolio strategies followed by practitioners are dominated because they are incompletely diversified over time the payoff distribution pricing model is used to compute the cost of following undiversified strategies simple numerical examples illustrate the technique and computer generated examples provide realistic estimates of the cost of some typical policies using reasonable parameter values the cost can be substantial and should not be ignored by practitioners a section on generalizations shows how to extend the analysis to term structure models and other general models of returns this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

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

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

why the far distant future should be discounted at its lowest possible rate abstract a critical feature of the distant future is currently unresolvable uncertainty about what will then be the appropriate rate of return on capital to use for discounting this paper shows that there is a well defined sense in which the lowest possible interest rate should be used for discounting the far distant future part of any investment project some implications are discussed for evaluating long term environmental projects or activities like measures to mitigate the possible effects of global climate change

measuring market power in food processing industries discussion focuses on the measurement of market power in the beef processing industry in the united states causal linkage between concentrated industrial structure and antisocial economic performance structure conduct performance paradigm basic model for fed cattle studies

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

term structure movements and pricing interest rate contingent claims this paper derives an arbitrage free interest rate movements model ar model this model takes the complete term structure as given and derives the subsequent stochastic movement of the term structure such that the movement is arbitrage free we then show that the ar model can be used to price interest rate contingent claims relative to the observed complete term structure of interest rates this paper also studies the behavior and the economics of the model our approach can be used to price a broad range of interest rate contingent claims including bond options and callable bonds

estimation of price cost margins and union bargaining power for belgian manufacturing abstract this paper extends hall s 1988 hall r e 1988 the relationship between price and marginal cost in us industry journal of political economy 96 921 947 methodology to analyze imperfections in both the product and the labor market for firms in the belgian manufacturing industry over the period 1988 1995 we investigate the heterogeneity in price cost mark up and workers bargaining power parameters among 18 sectors within the manufacturing industry as well as the relationship between both parameters using a sample of more than 7000 firms our gmm results indicate that ignoring imperfection in the labor market leads to an underestimation of the price cost margin evaluated at perfect competition in the labor market these findings are confirmed in the sectoral analysis sectors with higher workers bargaining power typically show higher price cost margins

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

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

multimarket market power estimation the australian retail meat sector a new technique for estimating market power in several markets simultaneously is developed and applied to the australian retail beef lamb and pork markets the hypotheses that market power is zero and that market power is the same for each meat cannot be rejected nor is there evidence that market power increased over the period of analysis little bias is created by examining markets is isolation rather than within a system when markets are competitive but that bias can be large when market power exists in some markets in the system

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

antitrust economic analysis in food marketing channels a global perspective antitrust enforcement concerning monopolies mergers and cartels is converging across all market oriented economies in the world this convergence is based upon neoclassical economic analysis of industrial organization the role of empirical economic analysis however has not converged as rapidly as the conceptual model because different countries have different enforcement institutions and strategies this article explains how antitrust enforcement has evolved over time from public agencies to a market for enforcement that admits private parties private party law suits and especially class action law suits on behalf of groups such as farmers and consumers is a mechanism for redressing the often superior legal and economic resources that defendant corporations have and public agencies do not have enforcement and the role of empirical analysis are compared in the united states and other countries examples of enforcement from different countries illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches finally some insights explain how economists function in enforcement and the attributes required for success

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

social impacts of community renewable energy projects findings from a woodfuel case study there is much current interest in the potential of community based renewable energy projects to contribute to transition towards low carbon energy systems as well as displacing fossil fuel consumption by increasing renewable energy generation projects are expected to have a range of social impacts which may result in additional positive sustainability outcomes these include potential to increase acceptance of renewable energy developments awareness of renewable and sustainable energy technologies and issues uptake of low carbon technologies and sustainable pro environmental behaviours to date however there has been little investigation of whether and how these impacts occur this paper presents results from qualitative research investigating the social impacts of a community woodfuel project as experienced by project participants and other local stakeholders findings show projects can raise awareness of renewable energy technologies and increase uptake of renewables overall the case study project successfully changed the local social context for development of woodfuel heating reducing risk for all involved in the future development of this sector particularly in the immediate locality there was some evidence of increased engagement with wider sustainability issues but this was limited to direct participants suggesting local projects need to be supported by wider systemic change to maximise impacts

heterogeneous patience and the term structure of real interest rates heterogeneous time preference has a profound impact on the wealth distribution and therefore on equilibrium asset prices i identify two distinct effects on interest rates an averaging effect due to jensen s inequality and a general equilibrium consumption timing effect the averaging effect decreases and the timing effect increases real interest rates and both effects induce an inverse term structure more fundamentally the model shows that asset prices need to be interpreted with caution evidence apparently pointing to non standard preferences may simply be the result of heterogeneity

market power and the cattle cycle the relationship between the dynamic cattle cycle and the potential for market power in cattle purchases has rarely been studied this paper provides a conceptual framework showing how the cattle cycle and buyer market power are related not only does a larger cattle stock lead to a lower fed cattle price but the cattle stock s negative effect on price is magnified by the degree of buyer market power in cattle procurement empirical findings support the posited theoretical relationships and help explain why previous researchers reached different conclusions regarding the extent of market power in the industry copyright 2010 oxford university press

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

determining market power exertion between buyers and sellers empirical techniques commonly used in industrial organization to measure market power exertion typically assume imperfectly competitive behaviour by firms on only one side of the market firms on the other side are assumed to be perfectly competitive in this paper we extend traditional neio methods by developing a method to estimate market power exertion when firms on both sides have potential market power using monte carlo simulations we find that the model correctly estimates market power exercised by firms on either or both sides of a market and also correctly estimates firms technology parameters when applied to the us leaf tobacco market findings indicate that cigarette manufacturers exert some monopsony power in purchasing leaf tobacco while producers organized as a cartel exhibit no countervailing monopoly market power copyright 2000 john wiley sons ltd

nonparametric tests of profit maximization in oligopoly with application to the beef packing industry in this paper we develop new nonparametric methods of testing for static profit maximization given noncompetitive behavior repeated application of the test yields maximum likelihood estimates of the degree of noncompetitive behavior using plant level data these newly developed nonparametric methods are employed to test the hypothesis that beef packers are profit maximizers and to measure the extent to which packers influence prices in fed cattle markets

market and cost structure in the u s beef packing industry a plant level analysis a resurgence of consolidation in the u s meat packing industry in the past few decades has stimulated academic and policy debate issues raised include the role of cost economies in driving these patterns and the effects on the agricultural sector cattle producers from market power here plant level cost and revenue data for u s beef packing plants are used to estimate a cost based model incorporating cattle and output market pricing behavior the robust results indicate little market power exploitation in either the cattle input or beef output markets and that any apparent evidence is counteracted by cost efficiencies such as utilization and scope economies copyright 2001 oxford university press

social responses to wind energy development in ontario the influence of health risk perceptions and associated concerns this study documents and analyzes the role of health risk perceptions and other associated concerns of wind energy development henceforth wed in ontario drawing on the risk society framework we conduct a longitudinal media content analysis to document and analyze perceptions of and responses to wed over a nine year period attention is paid to temporal variations in responses relative to ontario s green energy act 2009 henceforth gea legislation aimed at the rapid expansion of renewable energy the study reveals that the most radical forms of resistance to wed on health grounds are driven by perceived injustices in the treatment of potential at risk citizens and citizens with health concerns the gea is fuelling these perceptions of injustices in subtle and nuanced ways particularly by acting as a major confounder to health risk concerns contrary to several existing studies we problematize the use of financial incentives to foster the development of wind energy we also provide policy recommendations which include the need for increased public engagement in the wed process the importance of using third party health and environmental assessments to inform developments as well as the need for post development strategies to address ongoing community concerns

on the valuation of long dated assets i show that the pricing of a broad class of long dated assets is driven by the possibility of extraordinarily bad news this result does not depend on any assumptions about the existence of disasters nor does it apply only to assets that hedge bad outcomes indeed it applies even to long dated claims on the market in a lognormal world if the market s sharpe ratio is higher than its volatility as appears to be the case in practice

testing the monopsony inefficiency incentive for backward integration in theory monopsony at one stage in a vertically related market provides an incentive for backward integration into the adjacent competitive stages by integrating backward a monopsonist internalizes the monopsony inefficiency due to underemployment of the factor produced upstream however little is known about the importance of such incentive in practice in this paper i provide an empirically implementable model to test the monopsony inefficiency incentive for vertical integration for illustration the model is applied to the u s beef slaughter industry findings seem to support the monopsony inefficiency incentive for backward integration by the industry into the live cattle market

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

the effects of itq management on fishermen s welfare when the processing sector is imperfectly competitive in this paper we use a general model of imperfect competition to predict welfare changes within an open access fishery after it transitions to individual transferable quota itq management although related research has explored the effects of market power in the harvesting sector on itq performance none has considered the implications of an imperfectly competitive processing sector addressing this question we find that although fishermen should expect to gain from itqs under perfect competition they may suffer welfare losses if the processing sector is imperfectly competitive

testing for switching market conduct this paper tests for switching market conduct in an oligopsonistic industry the model adopts bresnahan s procedure for identifying the oligopoly solution and integrates the procedure with a switching regression model applied to the us beef slaughter industry two distinct regimes of conduct in the industry were identified the two regimes are consistent with the time periods during which the industry has undergone major structural change

dynamic asset allocation portfolio decomposition formula and applications a new decomposition of the optimal portfolio in dynamic models with von neumann morgenstern preferences and ito prices is established the formula rests on a change of numeraire that uses pure discount bonds as units of account the dynamic hedging demand has two components the first hedge insures against fluctuations in an optimally designed bond with a maturity date matching the investor s horizon the second hedge immunizes against fluctuations in the market price of risk in the bond numeraire various applications are examined new results concerning the behavior of extremely risk averse individuals the demand for bonds and its long horizon limit and the optimal portfolio in incomplete markets are derived the author 2009 published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies all rights reserved for permissions please email journals permissions oxfordjournals org oxford university press

the impact of oligopsony and taxation on the haitian coffee economy abstract this paper assessed the impact of exporters oligopsony power and government taxation on coffee prices production consumption exports and income distribution in haiti calibration simulation analyses based on estimated supply and demand functions as well as economic surpluses are conducted for alternative oligopsony taxation scenarios and 1965 1984 data empirical results revealed that the market distortions caused by the government s export taxes have far outweighed those caused by the exporters oligopsony power

correcting for measurement error in food demand estimation use of disappearance data as proxies for actual consumption causes inconsistent estimates of own price retail demand elasticities a system of equations describing consumer processor and producer behavior is used to consistently estimate the retail demand elasticity for beef using available data while avoiding the restrictive assumption of fixed input proportions implicit in disappearance data this approach yields an estimate of the own price retail demand elasticity for beef of 0 45 which is more inelastic than the estimate 0 66 obtained using a traditional approach the methodology is applicable to other food commodities for which disappearance data serve as proxies for actual consumption copyright 1993 by mit press

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

u s trade policy on lamb meat who gets fleeced the u s lamb meat industry received protection from import competition in 1999 with a tariff rate quota this paper analyzes proposed and adopted policies using a partial equilibrium model of lamb meat and lambs incorporating imperfect competition in the packing industry under a tariff policy packers can only exercise oligopsony power in the lamb market and both packers and lamb growers benefit from protection if a quota or tariff rate quota policy is used packers can assert oligopoly power packers benefit from protection but lamb growers may not under the tariff rate quota adopted lamb growers suffer a welfare loss copyright 2001 oxford university press

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

do alternative marketing arrangements increase pork packers market power in this article we use structural econometrics to formally test whether the use of the alternative marketing arrangements amas by pork packers is the source of their market power on the spot cash market for live hogs we specify the pork packers conjectures of the change in the industry total market procurement of live hogs through the spot market with respect to their amas stocks the test is carried out using the mandatory price reporting data our results show that pork packers have statistically significant market power on the spot market for live hogs but the source of that market power cannot be narrowed down to the existence of amas stocks copyright 2009 oxford university press

the role of values in public beliefs and attitudes towards commercial wind energy mandates for renewable energy lead to siting disputes because meeting the mandates requires the development of renewable energy production facilities proposals for one common form of renewable energy commercial wind farms are frequently met with forceful local opposition dissatisfied with simplistic explanations for this opposition i e nimby social scientists have urged a more nuanced understanding of public attitudes towards wind energy and other renewables based on a survey of residents of coastal michigan this article explores the role of general values and beliefs in shaping attitudes towards the potential development of commercial wind energy projects in or near respondents communities structural equation modeling reveals that support of commercial wind energy depends largely on a belief that wind farms will provide economic benefits to the community underlying values have substantial and important indirect effects on beliefs regarding the likely economic outcomes of wind farm development altruistic values buoy wind energy attitudes while values of traditionalism diminish wind energy support the pivotal role of values in attitudes towards renewables lends support for more participatory development processes

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