Technology, Labor Wars, and Producer Dynamics: Explaining Consolidation in Beefpacking

James MacDonald and Michael Ollinger

American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 2005, vol. 87, issue 4, 1020-1033

Abstract: Beefpacking underwent a dramatic transformation in the 1970s and 1980s, as plants got much larger and industry concentration rose dramatically. We use individual Census Bureau plant records to analyze the sources of the transformation. We find that there were modest but extensive scale economies in packing plants, covering the full range of plant sizes, and that such economies became more important throughout the period of the study. As production shifted to larger plants, we estimate that the industry's aggregate processing costs fell by 35.3% by 2002, compared to what they would have been without consolidation. Copyright 2005, Oxford University Press.

Date: 2005
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/j.1467-8276.2005.00785.x (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:87:y:2005:i:4:p:1020-1033

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 ().