COMMENTS ON THE STRUCTURAL CONVERGENCE HYPOTHESIS

Market convergence, food systems, North America, European Union, Agribusiness,

Comment on Crandall and Winston

In a paper published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives in the fall of 2003, Robert Crandall and Clifford Winston all but call for the repeal of the Nation’s antitrust laws. Their qualifications to make such a radical proposal are in doubt, but more importantly their purported review of empirical studies of overt price-fixing effects is shallow, biased, and naïve. Crandall and Winston’s assertion that the direct benefits of convicting pricefixers are slight is central to their paper’s thesis. Their review is shallow because the five studies that they examine comprise less than 2% of the economic literature that quantitatively estimates the price effects of explicit price-fixing schemes; it is biased because the chosen studies find no or weak price effects, whereas the vast majority of such studies find significant positive effects on price during the collusive period; it is naïve because the selected studies are either severely flawed or irrelevant.antitrust, price-fixing

Multi-agent evolutionary systems for the generation of complex virtual worlds

Modern films, games and virtual reality applications are dependent on convincing computer graphics. Highly complex models are a requirement for the successful delivery of many scenes and environments. While workflows such as rendering, compositing and animation have been streamlined to accommodate increasing demands, modelling complex models is still a laborious task. This paper introduces the computational benefits of an Interactive Genetic Algorithm (IGA) to computer graphics modelling while compensating the effects of user fatigue, a common issue with Interactive Evolutionary Computation. An intelligent agent is used in conjunction with an IGA that offers the potential to reduce the effects of user fatigue by learning from the choices made by the human designer and directing the search accordingly. This workflow accelerates the layout and distribution of basic elements to form complex models. It captures the designer's intent through interaction, and encourages playful discovery

Extraterritoriality of the Sherman Act and Deterrence of Private International Cartels

This paper presents two major economic arguments relevant to a decision facing the U.S. Supreme Court in early 2004. In Empagran v. F. Hoffmann-LaRoche the Court must decide whether companies like Empagran, an Ecuadorian animal-feed manufacturer, ought to be permitted to sue for treble damages under the 1890 Sherman Act, even though Empagran bought vitamins from a convicted global cartel wholly outside U.S. territory. Because of ineffective antitrust enforcement in its home country, Empagran and similarly situated buyers favor having this right, whereas Roche and 19 other members of the vitamins cartel oppose it. The first argument in favor of extraterritorial expansion concerns the effects on U.S. consumers and the competitiveness of U.S. markets. I argue that in the context of international price-fixing conspiracies, conduct relating to "wholly foreign" purchases necessarily affects domestic commerce. This is because international cartels must prevent international geographic arbitrage in order to succeed in controlling prices in any targeted national market. Second, this paper assembles empirical evidence that, should non-U.S. transactions be excluded from U.S. antitrust protection, the global aspirations of contemporary cartels offer an insuperable challenge to a core aim of the antitrust laws: Deterrence. The broad geographic harm generated by the scores of modern global price-fixing conspiracies has overwhelmed the ability of current laws about corporate antitrust sanctions to provide enough financial disincentives to discourage the formation of similar cartels in the future. Permitting foreign buyers who purchased the products of international cartels abroad to pursue civil antitrust damages actions in U.S. courts is necessary to yield the level of legal punishment needed to protect the U.S. economy and its consumers from future cartel injuries. Territorial expansion will also increase the probability of discovery of clandestine cartels by multiplying the number of jurisdictions in which private parties have an incentive to investigate collusive behavior.International Relations/Trade,

CONCENTRATION AND MERGERS IN U.S. WHOLESALE GROCERY MARKETS

This report analyzes a large sample of U.S. grocery warehouse operators in 54 well defined grocery marketing areas. Almost all grocer retail chains with more than 40 supermarkets and $500 million in retail sales in 1990 are vertically integrated into wholesaling. More than four-fifths of the market areas display high levels of sales concentration (four-firm concentration greater than 60 percent). The 1992 merger between Super Value and Wetterau violated federal merger enforcement guidelines in at least four market areas, and several more horizontal mergers between merchant grocery wholesalers have been consummated since then.Grocery wholesale trade, food retail trade, market concentration, mergers and acquisitions, vertical integration, antitrust policy, food distribution, geographic market definition.

NEW ESTIMATES OF WELFARE AND CONSUMER LOSSES IN U.S. FOOD MANUFACTURING

In the past 15 years, industrial-organization economists have significantly expanded the range of algorithms for calculating welfare losses due to imperfect competition. We compare eleven empirical estimates of economic losses due to market power in 47 U.S. food manufacturing industries, almost all of them previously unpublished. Each of the studies incorporate different theoretical assumptions about demand conditions, supply conditions, or industry pricing behavior; or they utilize various data sources, time periods, and assumptions about the proper competitive benchmark. The estimates of average allocative losses due imperfect competition range from 0.2 percent to an impossibly high 289 percent of industry output; consumer losses range from 6.0 percent to 816 percent. However, there is a high degree of congruence in the rankings of economic losses due to market power. Hence, from the perspective of antitrust enforcement, the choice of industry targets has not been greatly altered by advances in estimation techniques.Agribusiness,

THE DETERMINANTS OF COUPON DISCOUNTS FOR BREAKFAST CEREALS

This study identifies the determinants of coupon values at the brand level using a framework developed from price discrimination theory and the principles of demand. Couponing is considered within the context of a complex marketing program in which it is coordinated with other non-price promotional strategies. A simultaneous, two-equation, fixed-effects, panel-data model is specified and fitted with data on household purchases of ready-to-eat (RTE) breakfast cereals between 1992 and 1997. The empirical model accounts for the bi-directional causality between brand prices and discount levels and captures the retail effects of the major cereal maker's price cuts and discount reductions that occurred in 1996. Higher brand prices cause coupon values to rise, supporting the hypothesis that cereal makers price discriminate among consumers. Other non-price promotions, including advertising, store flyers, and in-store displays, appear to be coordinated with couponing. Specifically, coupon values fall with more intense advertising and in-store displays but rise when the couponed products are featured in store flyers. Discount levels are positively related to brand market share and the size of discounts that are redeemed for rival cereals. Moreover, coupon values fall with increasing brand loyalty among RTE cereal purchasers. Cereal prices are positively affected by coupon values, advertising expenditures, food-ingredient and packaging costs, and the prices of competing brands. Inventory levels are negatively correlated with brand price. Employee wages were not found to significantly influence cereal prices.Marketing,

MARKET CONDUCT IN THE U.S. READY-TO-EAT CEREAL INDUSTRY

The FTC's "shared monopoly" case was the focus of U.S. antitrust activity during the late 1970s, but prosecution of the cereal industry was terminated in 1981. We estimate the degree of market power in the industry, and find an increase in multilateral power after 1981.Marketing,