Structural Change and Competition in Seven U.S. Food Markets

Recent trends in mergers and acquisitions in the U.S. food sector food manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers raise concerns about market power. In the presence of market power, farmers may receive lower than competitive farm prices, and consumers may pay higher than competitive retail prices. This study presents empirical tests of market power at the national level for seven food categories: beef, pork, poultry, eggs, dairy, fresh fruit, and fresh vegetables. At the national level, our tests provide evidence of competitive conduct in both the sale of final food products and the purchase of farm ingredients.retail food and farm prices, market power, structural change, cointegration, Agribusiness, Industrial Organization,

CONSISTENT AGGREGATION IN FOOD DEMAND SYSTEMS

Two aggregation schemes for food demand systems are tested for consistency with the Generalized Composite Commodity Theorem (GCCT). One scheme is based on the standard CES classification of food expenditures. The second scheme is based on the Food Guide Pyramid. Evidence is found that both schemes are consistent with the GCCT.Demand and Price Analysis,

THE GENERALIZED COMPOSITE COMMODITY THEOREM AND FOOD DEMAND ESTIMATION

This paper reports tests of aggregation over consumer food products and estimates of aggregate food demand elasticities. Evidence that food demand variables follow unit root processes leads us to build on and simplify tests of the Generalized Composite Commodity Theorem found in the literature. We compute food demand elasticities using cointegration applied to a convenient but nonlinear functional form. Estimates are based on consumer reported expenditure data rather than commercial disappearance data.Demand and Price Analysis,

AIDS Model Estimates of Food Demand and the Decline in Farm Value Shares

This study attempts to find empirical support for one or both of the above reasons for declining food budget shares. Estimates of a deflated-income AIDS model of food demand are compared to estimates of the corresponding nominal-income AIDS model with respect to their implications for declining farm value shares.Consumer Food Demand, farm value shares, market power, Demand and Price Analysis,

Changing Consumer Food Prices: A User's Guide to ERS Analyses

USDA's Economic Research Service (ERS) uses different economic models to estimate the impact of higher input prices on consumer food prices. The present study compares three ERS models. In the first two models, neither consumers nor food producers respond to market prices. We refer to these two models as short-run models. In the third model, both consumers and food producers respond to changing prices, and we refer to this model as a long-run model. Given published parameter estimates, we simulate the impact of a higher energy price on consumer food prices, and our empirical findings are consistent with our understanding of market responses. In the short run, we find that the full effect of an increase in the price of energy is fully (or nearly fully) passed on to consumers, because neither food producers nor consumers can immediately respond to changing prices. In the long run, however, the price response of food producers and consumers serves to mitigate the increase in consumer food prices.price-spread model, input-output model, variable-proportions model, food prices, energy prices, input prices, Demand and Price Analysis,

IMPLICATIONS OF A U.S.-MEXICO FREE TRADE AGREEMENT FOR U.S. FOOD PROCESSORS

International Relations/Trade,

Neuropsychological constraints to human data production on a global scale

Which are the factors underlying human information production on a global level? In order to gain an insight into this question we study a corpus of 252-633 Million publicly available data files on the Internet corresponding to an overall storage volume of 284-675 Terabytes. Analyzing the file size distribution for several distinct data types we find indications that the neuropsychological capacity of the human brain to process and record information may constitute the dominant limiting factor for the overall growth of globally stored information, with real-world economic constraints having only a negligible influence. This supposition draws support from the observation that the files size distributions follow a power law for data without a time component, like images, and a log-normal distribution for multimedia files, for which time is a defining qualia.Comment: to be published in: European Physical Journal

Unravelling the size distribution of social groups with information theory on complex networks

The minimization of Fisher's information (MFI) approach of Frieden et al. [Phys. Rev. E {\bf 60} 48 (1999)] is applied to the study of size distributions in social groups on the basis of a recently established analogy between scale invariant systems and classical gases [arXiv:0908.0504]. Going beyond the ideal gas scenario is seen to be tantamount to simulating the interactions taking place in a network's competitive cluster growth process. We find a scaling rule that allows to classify the final cluster-size distributions using only one parameter that we call the competitiveness. Empirical city-size distributions and electoral results can be thus reproduced and classified according to this competitiveness, which also allows to correctly predict well-established assessments such as the "six-degrees of separation", which is shown here to be a direct consequence of the maximum number of stable social relationships that one person can maintain, known as Dunbar's number. Finally, we show that scaled city-size distributions of large countries follow the same universal distribution