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Full-Text Articles in Industrial Organization
Testing For Vertical Economies Of Scope: An Example From Us Pig Production, Azzeddine Azzam
Testing For Vertical Economies Of Scope: An Example From Us Pig Production, Azzeddine Azzam
Azzeddine Azzam
A firm operating in two or more stages of production is said to have vertical economies of scope if the costs of jointly producing two or more vertically adjacent products is less than the costs of producing the products independently. As important as those economies are in theory, they have so far received no empirical treatment compared to scope economies in multi-output production, especially in agriculture. This paper tests for vertical economies of scope in US pig production, using 1990 firm-level cost data. Based on the Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed-rank test, no evidence of vertical economies was found, meaning that it …
Captive Supplies, Market Conduct, And The Open-Market Price, Azzeddine Azzam
Captive Supplies, Market Conduct, And The Open-Market Price, Azzeddine Azzam
Azzeddine Azzam
In this paper, the author examines the anatomy of the price captive-supplies relationship to ascertain if some of the interpretations offered in the empirical literature are defensible. B. L. Gardner's one-product, two-input model is extended to consider a partially integrated oligopsonistic industry. The main result is that, although the empirical relationship between captive supplies and the price received by independent producers is negative, it may or may not be attributed to noncompetitive conduct. Hence, for an econometric model to detect what type of conduct the relationship reflects, more structural detail is needed than what so far has been provided in …
Competition In The Us Meatpacking Industry: Is It History?, Azzeddine Azzam
Competition In The Us Meatpacking Industry: Is It History?, Azzeddine Azzam
Azzeddine Azzam
The U.S. 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 …