Impact of Transportation Changes on Price Structures in City Milk Markets

Edmond S. Harris

American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 1967, vol. 49, issue 4, 844-851

Abstract: The sporadic occurrence of price wars in city milk markets since World War II raises the question of underlying causes. This article suggests that these are to be found in the great advances in transportation. The ability to move milk rapidly and cheaply over great distances has made individual cities and their environs less meaningful as separate and distinct markets. Within the city, the use of private cars for shopping has made stores more important in selling milk. As a result, milk distributors within each city can no longer determine prices by themselves. They must reckon with the competition of distantly based milk distributors and they must also share their price-making powers with retail outlets in the city. Instability of prices is seen as a symptom of a period of transition during which business enterprises are expanded and reorganized to cope with the changed market situation.

Date: 1967
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.2307/1236941 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:oup:ajagec:v:49:y:1967:i:4:p:844-851.

Access Statistics for this article

American Journal of Agricultural Economics is currently edited by Madhu Khanna, Brian E. Roe, James Vercammen and JunJie Wu

More articles in American Journal of Agricultural Economics from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().