A Price Screen for Collusion: Applications to the U.S. Beef and Pork Industries

Yuliya Bolotova

ISU General Staff Papers from Iowa State University, Department of Economics

Abstract: This research applies a price screen for collusion to the recent alleged price-fixing conspiracies in the U.S. beef and pork industries. This price screen assesses whether the behavior of wholesale beef and pork prices is consistent with the hypothesis that product (output) prices are higher and less volatile during the cartel period, compared to a more competitive period. In the case of beef, empirical evidence supports this hypothesis: the wholesale beef price is higher and less volatile in the alleged cartel period, compared to a prior period. In the case of pork, the empirical evidence is mixed: the wholesale pork price is higher and more volatile in the alleged cartel period, compared to a prior period. The empirical evidence provided by the price screen should not be interpreted as actual evidence of collusion. In addition, when applying the price screen to the beef and pork industries and interpreting the screen results, it is essential to consider that the observed market prices for livestock and meat products are influenced by a livestock production and price cycle. Considering increased attention to competition issues in the U.S. beef and pork industries, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Department of Justice should consider applying price screens for collusion to data available from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, including the livestock mandatory reporting data.

Date: 2025-12-18
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://dr.lib.iastate.edu/server/api/core/bitstre ... a16c285184dd/content
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

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:isu:genstf:202512182152110000

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ISU General Staff Papers from Iowa State University, Department of Economics Iowa State University, Dept. of Economics, 260 Heady Hall, Ames, IA 50011-1070. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Curtis Balmer ().