Welfare Implications of Oligopoly in U.S. Food Manufacturing

Micha Gisser

American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 1982, vol. 64, issue 4, 616-624

Abstract: A statistical procedure is used to show that increased concentration in U.S. food-manufacturing industries is associated with increased total input productivity. A price leadership model is employed in order to estimate total welfare loss. If an elasticity of −1 is assumed, deadweight loss to society is estimated at 0.5% of food value. If an elasticity of −0.5 is assumed, total loss to consumers amounts to 6.11% of food value, which is $10 billion in 1975. The increase in total factor productivity which is linked to concentration is roughly sufficient to offset the entire loss to consumers.

Date: 1982
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.2307/1240570 (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:64:y:1982:i:4:p:616-624.

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 ().