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We develop, estimate, and test a tractable general equilibrium model of oligopsony with differentiated jobs and concentrated labor markets. We estimate key model parameters by matching new evidence on the relationship between firms’ local labor market share and their employment and wage responses to state corporate tax changes. The model quantitatively replicates quasi-experimental evidence on imperfect productivity-wage pass-through and strategic wage setting of dominant employers. Relative to the efficient allocation, welfare losses from labor market power are 7.6 percent, while output is 20.9 percent lower. Lastly, declining local concentration added 4 percentage points to labor’s share of income between 1977 and 2013.

The purpose of this study is to describe the turmeric marketing channels and marketing functions carried out by trading institutions and calculate the margin value of each turmeric marketing channel in Lubuk Sikarah District, Solok, West Sumatra. The research time span is from November 2023 to December 2023. The method used is the survey method by using questionere. The data needed came from 36 farmers and 20 traders. The results obtained are that there are 2 marketing channels that are forwarded by the turmeric commodity from farmers to consumers. Marketing channels include (1) Channel I: Farmers - Collector Traders - Retailers - End Consumers; (2) Channel II: Farmers - Collectors - Wholesalers - Retailers - End Consumers. The smallest margin is obtained in channel I. At the same time, channel 1 is also the channel with the largest value of farmers’ shares. Based on the results of the study, it is recommended that the government be involved in the turmeric trading system in making turmeric marketing policies and regulations as well as regulating the turmeric market to ensuring reasonable prices for farmers and the institutions involved.

A special oligopoly model is considered when the firms compete on the factor market, and the used factor volumes determine their outputs. In the firm case conditions are given for the existence of the Nash equilibrium, and in the cooperative case, sufficient conditions are derived for the existence and uniqueness of the joint profit maximizer. In the case of a linear duopoly the dynamic extensions are introduced in both cases based on gradient adjustments. Conditions are given for the local asymptotic stability of the equilibrium and the joint profit maximizer without and with information delays.

We develop a tractable general equilibrium framework in which firms are large and have market power with respect to both products and labor, and in which a firm’s decisions are affected by its ownership structure. We characterize the Cournot–Walras equilibrium of an economy where each firm maximizes a share-weighted average of shareholder utilities—rendering the equilibrium independent of price normalization. In a one-sector economy, if returns to scale are non-increasing, then an increase in “effective” market concentration (which accounts for common ownership) leads to declines in employment, real wages, and the labor share. Yet when there are multiple sectors, due to an intersectoral pecuniary externality, an increase in common ownership could stimulate the economy when the elasticity of labor supply is high relative to the elasticity of substitution in product markets. We characterize for which ownership structures the monopolistically competitive limit or an oligopolistic one is attained as the number of sectors in the economy increases. When firms have heterogeneous constant returns to scale technologies, we find that an increase in common ownership leads to markets that are more concentrated.

Increasing consolidation and vertical coordination in the food chain have made the prospect of market power abuses by powerful food manufacturers and retailers an issue and a policy concern worldwide, in terms of potential impacts on farmer and consumer welfare and sector efficiency. We address the extent to which traditional wisdom and standard conceptual and empirical models that have girded thought about market power in the food chain for decades apply in modern food-market contexts and examine recent work on competition in the food chain to gauge the most promising paths forward. A key conclusion is that considerations that go beyond the bounds of standard models likely cause market power to be less than would be predicted based on the highly concentrated structures of many modern agricultural and food markets. These considerations include downstream buyers who rationally internalize long-run implications of their pricing decisions to farmers, powerful food manufacturers and retailers who countervail each other's market power, and the complex pricing decisions of multistore and multiproduct food retailers.

This article presents a model of oligopsony. It considers different conjectural variations that cover the whole range between the extreme cases of monopsony and perfect competition, such as Collusion, Threat, Cournot, Stackelberg, and Bertrand, and compares them in terms of prices, quantities, profits, markdown, price elasticity of supply and welfare. It also considers the impact of minimum wages, under the different conjectures analyzed.

The economically and culturally important Pacific halibut fishery in British Columbia, Canada, managed as an individual transferable quota fishery since 1993, has frequently been held up as an example of management best practices. This narrative of success has continued despite repeated warnings that there are serious problems with the fishery, including processors exerting ever greater control over the fishery, contrary to stated fisheries objectives. Administrative data from federal and provincial data sets were used to consider ownership and control in the halibut fishery, with a focus on processor quota ownership, leasing, and brokerage of leases. The analysis indicated that direct processor ownership of halibut quota, while more than doubling between 1996 and 2016, remains relatively low at less than 10% of the available quota. Processor control through the leasing of halibut, however, is much higher, accounting for more than half of all halibut quota transfers in 2016. Through strategies such as \"holding licences,\" processors increasingly act as hubs for leasing activity, which has shifted the balance of power in the fishery. This analysis (a) reveals that there is much more processor control than is obvious from a cursory review of ownership, (b) highlights approaches for assessing the level of processor control, and (c) recommends alternative government procedures for improving transparency and evaluating full spectrum outcomes of fisheries management such as equitable distribution of benefits.

The unprecedented spike in beef price spreads during the COVID-19-driven packing plant shutdowns prompted calls for investigations into \"inappropriate influence\" by packers in the beef market during the pandemic disruption. Using weekly data for the January 2010–August 2020 period and designating March–May 2020 as the disruption period, we estimate a structural oligopoly/oligopsony model using the generalized method of moments. We fail to reject the hypothesis of competitive pricing of beef and cattle.

North Carolina imposed a moratorium on the construction and expansion of swine farms in 1997. Existing facilities were granted production permits tied to specific properties, but the quota contributed to the consolidation of pork processors and stifled competition in the market for live hogs. Theory predicts that production permits should be a source of quasi-rents to farmers but that the market power of processors would reduce their value. Using a hedonic model of farm sales from 1994 to 2010 we find that the value of production permits dropped from 55% of the average farm price to 49%, costing farmers on average $68 thousand.

The pricing behavior of agricultural processing firms in input markets has large impacts on farmers’ and processors’ prosperity as well as the overall market structure. Despite analytical approaches to food processors’ pricing in agricultural input markets, the need for models to represent complex market features is urgent. Agent-based models (ABMs) serve as computational laboratories to understand complex markets emerging from autonomously interacting agents. Yet, individual agents within ABMs must be equipped with intelligent learning algorithms. In this paper, we propose supervised and unsupervised learning agents to simulate the pricing behavior of firms in agricultural markets’ ABMs. Supervised learning firms are pre-trained to accurately best respond to their competitors and are deemed to result in the market Nash equilibria. Unsupervised learning firms play a course of pricing interaction with their competitors without any pre-knowledge but based on deep reinforcement learning. The simulation results show that unsupervised deep learning firms are capable of approximating the pricing equilibria obtained by the supervised firms in different spatial market settings. Optimal discriminatory and uniform delivery pricing emerges in agricultural input markets with the high and intermediary importance placed on space. Free on board pricing emerges in agricultural input markets with small importance placed on space.