 Scale Effects and Mark‐ups in the US Food and Fibre Industries: Capital Investment and Import Penetration ImpactsJournal of Agricultural Economics, 1999, vol. 50, issue 1, 64-82 Abstract: Capital investment patterns and import penetration are often alleged to influence firms' costs and prices, and thus economic performance. We examine the impacts of these factors on measures of scale economies, input demand/composition, and market power in the US food and fibre industries. Flexible variable cost functions incorporating quasi‐fixity of three categories of private (internal) capital and two external technological and trade (import) factors represent the cost structures of the two industries. Pricing equations, based on inverse demand functions including import prices, represent output decisions. Cost and demand elasticities constructed from this model indicate reduced manufacturing costs from technical and trade, scale and capital effects. This increased cost efficiency arises largely from materials savings in the textiles industry and reduced labour use in the food industry. Mark‐up behaviour is exhibited for most of the sample period in the textiles industry, and neither industry appears heavily affected by import prices. Date: 1999 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:jageco:v:50:y:1999:i:1:p:64-82 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Journal of Agricultural Economics is currently edited by David Harvey More articles in Journal of Agricultural Economics from Wiley Blackwell |
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