Competition in U.S. Farm Product Markets: Do Long-Run Incentives Trump Short-Run Market Power?

John Crespi, Tina L. Saitone and Richard J. Sexton

Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, 2012, vol. 34, issue 4, 669-695

Abstract: This article addresses the current status of farm buyer market power. We argue that buyer power concerns are often overstated because traditional models of buyer power are incapable of depicting the economic interactions that are fundamental to modern agricultural markets, where exchange is governed by stable contractual relationships. Exercising short-run oligopsony power is inimical to the long-run interests of buyers in these settings because below-competitive returns will lead to the exodus of resources from input production. Policy proposals grounded in the presumed linkage between concentration, competition, and market power may well be misguided and detrimental to the objectives that proponents seek to advance.

Date: 2012
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (41)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/aepp/pps045 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Journal Article: Competition in U.S. Farm Product Markets: Do Long-Run Incentives Trump Short-Run Market Power? (2012)
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:apecpp:v:34:y:2012:i:4:p:669-695.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy is currently edited by Timothy Park, Tomislav Vukina and Ian Sheldon

More articles in Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().