Market Structure, Marketing Method, and Price Instability

Margaret E. Slade

The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1991, vol. 106, issue 4, 1309-1340

Abstract: Data for metals sold on commodity exchanges and at prices set by producers are used to test the relationship between the organization of markets and the behavior of prices. On the production side the question is whether prices are more stable in concentrated industries. And on the sales side the question is whether markets where buyers are consumers have more stable prices than those with consumers and speculators. The recent increase in metal-price instability is explained by changes in the market-structure and organization variables. Foremost is increased reliance on commodity exchanges. Declines in concentration are of less importance.

Date: 1991
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (42)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.2307/2937966 (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:qjecon:v:106:y:1991:i:4:p:1309-1340.

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

Access Statistics for this article

The Quarterly Journal of Economics is currently edited by Robert J. Barro, Lawrence F. Katz, Nathan Nunn, Andrei Shleifer and Stefanie Stantcheva

More articles in The Quarterly Journal of Economics from President and Fellows of Harvard College
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().