Assessing Competitive Conditions and Welfare Losses in the Greek Food and Beverages Manufacturing Industry : An Extended Hall-Roeger Approach

This paper extends the Hall-Roeger methodology in order to investigate the market structure and to measure the degree of market power in the Greek food and beverages manufacturing industry over the period 1984-2007 at the three-digit SIC level. The present paper also estimates the net and the total welfare losses due to the possible existence of market power. The bootstrap method is applied to assign measures of accuracy to the statistical estimates. The empirical results imply the presence of imperfect competition as well as the existence of some degree of market power in the Greek food and beverages manufacturing industry over the period 1984-2007. The findings also support the existence of welfare losses