DO U.S. MARKETING ORDERS HAVE MUCH MARKET POWER? AN EXAMINATION OF THE ALMOND BOARD OF CALIFORNIA

This paper tests the conventional wisdom that U.S. marketing orders act as profit-maximizing cartels. The paper analyzes the marketing order for U.S. almonds in both the domestic and export markets. Such a case study is relevant to all U.S. marketing orders because the size and scope of the U.S. almond industry on the world market, and the legal authority of the almond marketing order makes it a likely prospect for exhibiting true cartel behavior. The authors find that the market power exerted by the Almond Board of California's reserve setting is significantly less than would be expected from a profit-maximizing cartel.Marketing,

On LpL^p--LqL^q trace inequalities

We give necessary and sufficient conditions in order that inequalities of the type $$\| T_K f\|_{L^q(d\mu)}\leq C \|f\|_{L^p(d\sigma)}, \qquad f \in L^p(d\sigma),$$ hold for a class of integral operators $T_K f(x) = \int_{R^n} K(x, y) f(y) d \sigma(y)$ with nonnegative kernels, and measures $d \mu$ and $d\sigma$ on $\R^n$, in the case where $p>q>0$ and $p>1$. An important model is provided by the dyadic integral operator with kernel $K_{\mathcal D}(x, y) \sum_{Q\in{\mathcal D}} K(Q) \chi_Q(x) \chi_Q(y)$, where $\mathcal D=\{Q\}$ is the family of all dyadic cubes in $\R^n$, and $K(Q)$ are arbitrary nonnegative constants associated with $Q \in{\mathcal D}$. The corresponding continuous versions are deduced from their dyadic counterparts. In particular, we show that, for the convolution operator $T_k f = k\star f$ with positive radially decreasing kernel $k(|x-y|)$, the trace inequality $$\| T_k f\|_{L^q(d\mu)}\leq C \|f\|_{L^p(d x)}, \qquad f \in L^p(dx),$$ holds if and only if ${\mathcal W}_{k}[\mu] \in L^s (d\mu)$, where $s = {\frac{q(p-1)}{p-q}}$. Here ${\mathcal W}_{k}[\mu]$ is a nonlinear Wolff potential defined by ${\mathcal W}_{k}[\mu](x)=\int_0^{+\infty} k(r) \bar{k}(r)^{\frac 1 {p-1}} \mu (B(x,r))^{\frac 1{p-1}} r^{n-1} dr,$ and $\bar{k}(r)=\frac1{r^n}\int_0^r k(t) t^{n-1} dt$. Analogous inequalities for $1\le q < p$ were characterized earlier by the authors using a different method which is not applicable when $q<1$