This report analyzes the economic impact of price fixing in the wet corn milling industry on consumers in the State of Michigan. Two of the companies who produce citric acid have pleaded guilty to fixing its price. In this report we assume that price fixing also occurred among HFCS producers....

This study examines the ability of the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) to price discriminate in bread wheat exports. This study models wheat as a vertically differentiated intermediate good and modifies the model of vertical differentiation by Mussa and Rosen to the realities of wheat import demand....

This article documents the need for reform of milk pricing in the Northeast. The New York price gouging law can be recast as a fair share law. This new milk policy “kills two birds with one stone.” It corrects regional inequities in raw milk pricing by reforming the pricing of milk at retail...

This paper investigates how a retailer's store brand supply source impacts vertical pricing and supply channel profitability. Using chain-level retail scanner data from major supermarkets in Boston prior to the leading retailer's divestiture of its store brand milk processing to a major brand...

The issue of supermarket chain power in wholesale markets has been around at least since the 1930’s when A&P surfaced as a nationwide chain with centralized buying (Adelman, 1959). Curiously those that complained the loudest were not firms that sold to supermarkets. Small retailers, who were...

The three major infant formula manufacturers bid state by state to be the exclusive provider to poor families under the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program, and all three compete for non-WIC customers at grocery stores. Previous studies explained the low WIC prices and the higher retail...

This paper employs a nation-wide sample of supermarket scanner data to estimate a large brandlevel demand system for beer in the U.S. Unlike previous studies, this work estimates the ownand cross-advertising elasticities in addition to price elasticities. The dimensionality problem is solved...

The impact of consumer demand for quality on the agricultural and food system is an increased emphasis on quality differentiation but not all in the direction of upgrading quality. The more elite market segments are thriving and reaching growing numbers of consumers but the basic price/quality...

This article uses a discrete choice, random coefficients logit model for analyzing consumer behavior and retail price competition in the Boston fluid milk market. The problems of product dimensionality and consumer heterogeneity implied by imperfect substitution in markets with differentiated...