Suchergebnisse

In many industrialized countries, the grocery-retailing sector exhibits a strong and increasing market concentration. Hence, it is important to understand retail pricing for many questions related to market power in the marketing chain and to agricultural and food policies. We analyze intertemporal pricing of grocery retailers in Germany with a large set of scanner data for processed foods. In theory, food prices could be rather variable, e.g. due to fluctuating commodity prices in a competitive world, or rather rigid, e.g. due to price adjustment costs. We elaborate that retail sales are crucial and raise food price variability at the points of sale. Despite this, prices are rather rigid and often do not change for many weeks. Moreover, pricing strategies for identical brands vary strongly across retailers. Retailers seem to have differential pricing strategies and, thus, market power. This casts substantial doubt on the assumption of a competitive price transmission in the marketing channel underlying most analyses in agricultural economics.

This article shows how national interests in price-changing international commodity agreements can be measured. Two approaches are distinguished. Firstly, changes in national interests can be measured that are caused by the introduction of an international commodity agreement in an otherwise unregulated world market. This approach is based on a comparison of the situations with and without a commodity agreement. It represents a positive approach to measuring national interests. Secondly, changes in national interests can be measured that result from the individual country's decision to participate in the agreement or to stay outside. This approach compares the situation of participation with that of non-participation in an existing commodity agreement. As the consequences of a national decision are analyzed, it is a normative or decision-oriented approach to measuring national interests. The ICA is a particularly interesting scheme to show the two approaches, as some countries participate in the agreement while others do not. This has led to the co-existence of a controlled and an uncontrolled market with different prices.

This article gives an introduction into the economics of food sanctions. It is shown which economic impacts arise from food sanctions and how they are affected by their determinants. The empirical evidence is reviewed and unresolved questions are elaborated. Theoretically, an export embargo for food can cause strong or weak impacts on the target country, on the embargo sender and on non-participating countries. Crucial for the economic effects are the nature of the embargo, the strategies for adjustment of the countries in the sanctioned market, and the market position of the embargo sender. The empirical evidence for the US grain embargo against the USSR shows that the international grain market adjusted flexibly to the embargo. A significant change in the structure of international grain trade took place whereas the aggregate impacts of the embargo remained modest. Two pre-conditions for an effective embargo are often stressed. First, the embargo sender must have a monopoly or convince potential competitors not to expand their sales to the target country. Second, transshipment does not occur. Both pre-conditions did not hold true in the case of the grain embargo. In fact, an international commodity market can hardly be thought of where these conditions are met. Hence, the rationale for food sanctions could rather lie in the political signalling function than in strong economic impacts on the embargoed nation. An important finding is that methodology matters for the magnitude of the measured effect of the grain embargo. In particular, the impacts on the structure of grain trade are sensitive with respect to the methodology used. Therefore, it is increasingly necessary to test the assumptions of the empirical trade modeis.