Corporate Concentration and Market Dynamics in Hungary’s Food Manufacturing Industry Between 1993 and 2022

Mahdi Imani Bashokoh (), Gergely Tóth and Omeralfaroug Ali
Additional contact information
Mahdi Imani Bashokoh: Doctoral School in Economics and Regional Science, Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life Sciences, 7400 Kaposvár, Hungary
Gergely Tóth: Institute of Rural Development and Sustainable Economy, Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life Sciences, 7400 Kaposvár, Hungary
Omeralfaroug Ali: Agribiotechnology and Precision Breeding for Food Security National Laboratory, Institute of Physiology and Animal Nutrition, Department of Animal Physiology and Health, Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life Sciences, 7400 Kaposvár, Hungary

Economies, 2025, vol. 13, issue 5, 1-28

Abstract: The changes in market structures in post-socialist economies have led to a significant increase in interest in the dynamics of corporate concentration and its broader socio-economic impacts. This study aimed to assess Hungary’s food industry over a 30-year period (1993–2022), with a primary focus on corporate concentration, by analyzing nine main sectors and their 38 subsectors using grounded theory, trend analysis, and sparse partial least squares-discriminant analysis. The findings reveal that the Hungarian food industry has been moderately to highly concentrated across all sectors (three and six major sectors, respectively). Two distinct periods of increasing corporate concentration were identified: 1996–1998 and 2004–2007, coinciding with post-communist economic reforms and Hungary’s accession to the European Union. These structural shifts led to a decline in the number of active firms, a reduction in workforce size, and increased challenges for smaller competitors; meanwhile, larger domestic companies expanded, and ownership structures transitioned toward privatization and internationalization. In the later years, market concentration showed a declining trend and then gradually stabilized.

Keywords: corporate concentration; food industry; market control; corporate consolidation; market power; Hungary (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E F I J O Q (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7099/13/5/136/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7099/13/5/136/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jecomi:v:13:y:2025:i:5:p:136-:d:1656162

Access Statistics for this article

Economies is currently edited by Ms. Hongyan Zhang

More articles in Economies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().