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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

1991

Selected Works

Industrial Organization

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Marketing Margins, Market Power, And Price Uncertainty, John Schroeter, Azzeddine Azzam Dec 1990

Marketing Margins, Market Power, And Price Uncertainty, John Schroeter, Azzeddine Azzam

Azzeddine Azzam

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 for 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 …


Using Auction Theory To Inform Takeover Regulation, Peter Cramton, Alan Schwartz Dec 1990

Using Auction Theory To Inform Takeover Regulation, Peter Cramton, Alan Schwartz

Peter Cramton

This paper focuses on certain mechanisms that govern the sale of corporate assets. Under Delaware law, when a potential acquirer makes a serious bid for a target, the target’s Board of Directors is required to act as would "auctioneers charged with getting the best price for the stock-holders at a sale of the company.’’ The Delaware courts’ preference for auctions follows from two premises. First, a firm’s managers should maximize the value of their shareholders’ investment in the company. Second, auctions maximize shareholder returns. The two premises together imply that a target’s board should conduct an auction when at least …