IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ags/jlofdr/139063.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Concentration In Beef Packing and Slaughter Cattle Pricing

Author

Listed:
  • Love, H. Alan
  • Capps, Oral, Jr.
  • Williams, Gary W.

Abstract

Using unique data from a pre-mandatory price-reporting period we empirically investigate the effects of beef packer concentration and size efficiencies, packer procurement and pricing methods, and other market variables and quality characteristics on the prices paid by packers for slaughter cattle. We find that packers pay less for fed cattle in more concentrated regions. However, we find that concentration is only one of numerous market factors determining fed-cattle prices and is less important than many. Quality variables controlled by sellers, such as cattle type, are more important in determining the price paid by packers than packer concentration, size economies, procurement methods, or other variables outside seller control. This analysis then offers a set of hypotheses to consider in analyses of the beef packing industry from the post-mandatory price-reporting period.

Suggested Citation

  • Love, H. Alan & Capps, Oral, Jr. & Williams, Gary W., 2010. "Concentration In Beef Packing and Slaughter Cattle Pricing," Journal of Food Distribution Research, Food Distribution Research Society, vol. 41(3), pages 1-17, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:jlofdr:139063
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.139063
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/139063/files/Love_41_3.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.139063?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Tian Xia & Richard J. Sexton, 2004. "The Competitive Implications of Top-of-the-Market and Related Contract-Pricing Clauses," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 86(1), pages 124-138.
    2. Koontz, Stephen R. & Garcia, Philip, 1997. "Meat-Packer Conduct In Fed Cattle Pricing: Multiple-Market Oligopsony Power," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 22(1), pages 1-17, July.
    3. Azzam, Azzeddine M. & Schroeter, John R., 1991. "Implications Of Increased Regional Concentration And Oligopsonistic Coordination In The Beef Packing Industry," Western Journal of Agricultural Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 16(2), pages 1-8, December.
    4. Bresnahan, Timothy F & Reiss, Peter C, 1991. "Entry and Competition in Concentrated Markets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 99(5), pages 977-1009, October.
    5. Brown, James N & Rosen, Harvey S, 1982. "On the Estimation of Structural Hedonic Price Models," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(3), pages 765-768, May.
    6. Azzeddine M. Azzam & John R. Schroeter, 1995. "The Tradeoff between Oligopsony Power and Cost Efficiency in Horizontal Consolidation: An Example from Beef Packing," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 77(4), pages 825-836.
    7. Azzeddine Azzam, 1996. "Testing the Monopsony-Inefficiency Incentive for Backward Integration," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 78(3), pages 585-590.
    8. Kyle W. Stiegert & Azzeddine Azzam & B. Wade Brorsen, 1993. "Markdown Pricing and Cattle Supply in the Beef Packing Industry," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 75(3), pages 549-558.
    9. Love, H. Alan & Burton, Diana M., 1999. "A Strategic Rationale For Captive Supplies," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 24(1), pages 1-18, July.
    10. Ted C. Schroeder & Rodney Jones & James Mintert & Andrew P. Barkley, 1993. "The Impact of Forward Contracting on Fed Cattle Transaction Prices," Review of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 15(2), pages 325-337.
    11. Lucas, Robert E B, 1975. "Hedonic Price Functions," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 13(2), pages 157-178, June.
    12. Cropper, Maureen L & Deck, Leland B & McConnell, Kenneth E, 1988. "On the Choice of Functional Form for Hedonic Price Functions," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 70(4), pages 668-675, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Tina L. Saitone & K. Aleks Schaefer & Daniel Scheitrum & Shawn Arita & Vince Breneman & Rebecca Nemec Boehm & Josh G. Maples, 2024. "Consolidation and Concentration in U.S. Meat Processing: Updated Measures Using Plant-Level Data," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 64(1), pages 35-56, February.
    2. Panagiotou, Dimitrios & Stavrakoudis, Athanassios, 2017. "Vertical price relationships between different cuts and quality grades in the U.S. beef marketing channel: A wholesale-retail analysis," The Journal of Economic Asymmetries, Elsevier, vol. 16(C), pages 53-63.
    3. Ted C. Schroeder & Brian K. Coffey & Glynn T. Tonsor, 2023. "Hedonic modeling to facilitate price reporting and fed cattle market transparency," Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 45(3), pages 1716-1733, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Love, H. Alan & Burton, Diana M., 1999. "A Strategic Rationale For Captive Supplies," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 24(1), pages 1-18, July.
    2. Inbae Ji & Chanjin Chung & Jungmin Lee, 2017. "Measuring Oligopsony Power in the U.S. Cattle Procurement Market: Packer Concentration, Cattle Cycle, and Seasonality," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 33(1), pages 16-29, January.
    3. Dimitrios Panagiotou & Athanassios Stavrakoudis, 2017. "A Stochastic Production Frontier Estimator of the Degree of Oligopsony Power in the U.S. Cattle Industry," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 17(1), pages 121-133, March.
    4. Azzam, Azzeddine M., 1998. "Competition in the US meatpacking industry: is it history?," Agricultural Economics, Blackwell, vol. 18(2), pages 107-126, March.
    5. Cai, Xiaowei & Stiegert, Kyle W. & Koontz, Stephen R., 2009. "Oligopsony Power: Evidence from the U.S. Beef Packing Industry," 2009 Annual Meeting, July 26-28, 2009, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 49364, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    6. Stephen R. Koontz & John D. Lawrence, 2010. "Impacts of alternative marketing agreement cattle procurement on packer costs, gross margins, and profits: evidence from plant-level profit and loss data," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(1), pages 1-24.
    7. Muth, Mary K. & Wohlgenant, Michael K., 1998. "A Model Of Imperfect Competition Using Marginal Input And Output Prices: Application To The Beef Packing Industry," 1998 Annual meeting, August 2-5, Salt Lake City, UT 20853, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    8. Ward, Clement E., 2002. "A Review of Causes for and Consequences of Economic Concentration in the U.S. Meatpacking Industry," CAFRI: Current Agriculture, Food and Resource Issues, Canadian Agricultural Economics Society, issue 3, pages 1-28, January.
    9. Jung Min Lee & Chanjin Chung, 2024. "Estimating Market Power Exertion in the U.S. Beef Packing Industry: An Illustration of Data Aggregation Bias Using Simulated Data," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(9), pages 1-19, April.
    10. Tian Xia & John M. Crespi & Kevin C. Dhuyvetter, 2019. "Could packers manipulate spot markets by tying contracts to futures prices? And do they?," Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics/Revue canadienne d'agroeconomie, Canadian Agricultural Economics Society/Societe canadienne d'agroeconomie, vol. 67(1), pages 85-102, March.
    11. Ronchi, Loraine, 2006. "Fairtrade and market failures in agricultural commodity markets," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4011, The World Bank.
    12. Smed, Sinne & Hansen, Lars Garn, 2018. "Consumer Valuation of Health Attributes in Food," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 43(2), May.
    13. Zhang, Congwen & Boyle, Kevin J. & Kuminoff, Nicolai V., 2015. "Partial identification of amenity demand functions," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 180-197.
    14. Kenneth Y. Chay & Michael Greenstone, 2005. "Does Air Quality Matter? Evidence from the Housing Market," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 113(2), pages 376-424, April.
    15. Christopher C. Pudenz & Lee L. Schulz, 2024. "Multi‐plant coordination in the U.S. beef packing industry," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 106(1), pages 382-415, January.
    16. Muth, Mary K. & Liu, Yanyan & Koontz, Stephen R. & Lawrence, John D., 2008. "Differences in Prices and Price Risk Across Alternative Marketing Arrangements Used in the Fed Cattle Industry," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 33(1), pages 1-18, April.
    17. Zhang, Mingxia & Sexton, Richard J., 2000. "Captive Supplies And The Cash Market Price: A Spatial Markets Approach," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 25(1), pages 1-21, July.
    18. Guci, Ledia & Brown, Mark G., 2007. "Changes in the Structure of the Florida Processed Orange Industry and Potential Impacts on Competition," Research papers 36811, Florida Department of Citrus.
    19. Cesar L. Revoredo Giha & Denis A. Nadolnyak & Stanley M. Fletcher, 2005. "Contract Marketing in the US after the 2002 Farm Act: The Case of Peanuts," Environmental Economy and Policy Research Working Papers 11.2005, University of Cambridge, Department of Land Economics, revised 2005.
    20. Gonzalez, Fidel & Leipnik, Mark & Mazumder, Diya, 2013. "How much are urban residents in Mexico willing to pay for cleaner air?," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 18(3), pages 354-379, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:jlofdr:139063. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/fdrssea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.