Temporary Equilibrium,Full Equilibrium,and Elasticity of Cost

The result by Morrison (1985) and Morrison and Schwarzt (1994) that there is an one-to-one relationship between the rate of economic capacity utilization and ratio of cost elasticities at the temporary and the full equilibrium has been instrumental in past studies on measuring economic capacity utilization and on adjusting indexes of productivity growth for temporary equilibrium. In this paper, dynamic duality and comparative dynamics are employed to assess the behavior of cost elasticity along an optimal path to the steady state. The analysis suggests that no a priori relationship exists between economic capacity utilization and elasticity of cost. The absence of an a priori relationship between these two economic variables implies that theoretical and empirical results based on past notions about the dynamic behavior of cost elasticity may have to be reconsidered.     

Member Coordination Costs and Spatial Entry Deterrence in a Mixed Duopsony with a Cooperative

This paper investigates cooperative spatial entry deterrence. To this end, it employs a dynamic game where an investor-owned firm (IOF) competes with a farmers’ processing cooperative which incurs a fixed coordination cost per member. The results indicate that as the value of coordination cost per member increases or the processing margin rises, it becomes more likely for the IOF to use cooperative limit pricing, that is, to deter the cooperative’s market entry. The opposite is true for an increase in the freight rate.     

A Family of Differential Input Demand Systems with Application to Greek Agriculture

This paper develops a family of input demand systems via alternative parametrisations of Theil's differential model. Each member of this family is as flexible as any other locally flexible functional form. More importantly, selection among the competing family members is possible via simple parameter restrictions. The family of differential input demand systems is applied to the agricultural sector in Greece for the period 1961–96. Formal tests suggest that the model with the CBS-type effects dominates the alternative models. Divisia and price elasticities are calculated from the selected model and a decomposition of changes in the demand for inputs into technical change, total input volume, substitution, and residual effects is performed. The empirical results are quite reasonable. Overall, the analysis in this paper indicates that, in certain cases, the differential approach may provide an attractive alternative to the dual approach in modelling production behaviour.     

Price transmission in the international skim milk powder markets

This article investigates the strength and the pattern of spatial price linkages in skimmed milk powder markets using monthly wholesale price data from three major producers and exporters (the U.S.A., the E.U., and Oceania) and the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag model. The results suggest that prices in the three regions considered are linked with stable long-run relationships. The law of one price, however, does not hold. The dominant pattern of transmission in the long run is asymmetric involving positive price stocks to be transmitted with higher intensity compared to negative prices shocks; asymmetries in price transmission exist in the short run as well.     

Testing for the LOP under nonlinearity: an application to four major EU pork markets

This article develops an econometric procedure to test the validity of the Law of One Price (LOP) under nonlinearity and to distinguish between its strong and its weak version. The procedure is applied to four major EU pork markets using weekly prices from 1991 to 2008. The empirical results suggest that the markets are well integrated, with deviations from the steady‐state price differentials corrected nonlinearly. The LOP is valid for all market pairs and for the pair Germany–Spain it holds in its strong version.     

Price linkages in the international skim milk powder market: empirical evidence from nonparametric and time‐varying copulas

The objective of this article is to assess the integration of the international skim milk powder (SMP) market. This is pursued using monthly data over 2001 to 2014 from the three principal SMP‐producing regions (the EU, the USA and Oceania) and nonparametric kernel‐based and time‐varying copulas. The empirical results point to a strong and an increasing degree of overall price co‐movement and to statistically significant probabilities for joint price crashes and booms. While the EU and Oceania have been the regions with the highest degree of integration, the USA has been catching up with them.     

The demand for selected nutrients by Greek households: an empirical analysis with quantile regressions

The article uses information from the 1993–1994 Household Consumption Survey and the semiparametric quantile regression approach to analyze the demand for three macronutrients (carbohydrates, proteins, and fats) and three micronutrients (minerals, vitamins, and cholesterol) in Greece. According to the empirical results the age of the household head, the degree of urbanization, the percentage of food expenditure devoted to food away‐from‐home, and the per capita consumption expenditure affect the intakes of nutrients across all the five quantiles considered. The impact, however, of the household head's gender and the impact of his (her) educational achievement are located only at the lower and the higher quantiles, respectively. The expenditure elasticities are substantially lower than unity, suggesting inelastic responses of nutrient intakes to per capita consumption expenditure.     

Food scares, advertising, and the demand for meat cuts in Great Britain

Retail demand systems for 19 different cuts of meat for beef, lamb, pork, bacon and poultry in Great Britain are estimated from monthly time series of consumer expenditure from 1989-2000 using a two stage budget allocation process and an LA/AIDS specification. The unconditional expenditure, own and cross price elasticities are derived for the individual meat cuts. The impact of adverse publicity from meat scares, especially BSE, and of positive publicity through consumer promotion and advertising are incorporated into the modelling. Meat scares produced a reallocation of consumer spending from red to white meats during the 1990s. The impact of species-based advertising was shown to have complex spillover effects both within and between meat species, and the response of consumer demand to advertising was considerably less than to adverse publicity.     

Location equilibria in a mixed duopsony with a cooperative

This work analyses a two‐stage price–location game between a profit maximising firm and a primary producers' cooperative. According to the results, the location equilibria are not fixed but depend on the intrinsic competitiveness of the spatial market. As the intrinsic competitiveness rises, the cooperative tends to be located closer to the middle point of the market. The limited differentiation in location entails an efficiency loss which is nevertheless smaller than that associated with the competition of two profit maximising firms (pure duopsony) on exactly the same spatial market. The superiority of a mixed duopsony lies in the fact that the resulting equilibrium locations entail lower total transportation cost relative to those of a pure duopsony.