Cartel Pricing with Entry: the Experience of the Far West Marketing Order for Spearmint

This paper documents the remarkable experience of the Far West mint producers in the operation of their marketing order. From 1993 to 2002, the marketing order witnessed a dramatic reduction its share of the Scotch spearmint market, as well as a reduction in both its price. We apply a model of a cartel facing a competitive fringe to describe the fall in the marketing order price as a logical consequence of increased world production of spearmint oil. We estimate an econometric model of the marketing order price and find that a 1-percent change in the marketing order's market share corresponds to a 0.8 percent change in the marketing order price.