The Role of Information Technology in the Fuel Ethanol Industry

John R. Dunn, Margriet Caswell, Tony Crooks, Vernon Eidman, James Hrubovcak, Hosein Shapouri, Scott Richman and Tom Scott

No 31825, 2005 Annual Meeting, November 8-9 from NCERA-194 Research on Cooperatives

Abstract: This USDA-sponsored study uses panels of ethanol industry experts and follow up interviews with plant owners and managers to examine how information technology has impacted the structure, organization, and operations of the fuel ethanol industry. The study examined the following questions regarding the future of the ethanol industry: (1) Does the present ethanol industry represent a stable structure or a transitional step toward an inevitable concentration of ownership into the hands of a few large processing firms? (2) Have contemporary information technologies fundamentally changed the information flows, scale of operations, access to markets, conditions of vertical and horizontal coordination, sources of finance, and the competitive landscape for the medium-sized, independent processing firm? (3) To what degree have cost savings associated with better access to information and financing offset the cost savings traditionally associated with horizontal and vertical integration in processing industries? (4) What steps do medium-sized ethanol production entities need to take to continue to survive in this new information-based market environment?

Keywords: Resource/Energy; Economics; and; Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 56
Date: 2005
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/31825/files/cp05cr03.pdf (application/pdf)

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:ags:ncerfi:31825

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.31825

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2005 Annual Meeting, November 8-9 from NCERA-194 Research on Cooperatives Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().