IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/erevae/v46y2019i2p319-345..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The relationship between price and retail concentration: evidence from the US food industry

Author

Listed:
  • Vardges Hovhannisyan
  • Clare Cho
  • Marin Bozic

Abstract

This study utilises the product barcode, store and retail real estate data to obtain consistent estimates of the effects of retail market concentration on food prices in the USA. Our disaggregated data allow for an identification strategy that corrects for the endogeneity of concentration in the concentration–price relationship. Findings from an instrumental variables fixed-effects model indicate that prices rise with retail concentration, and that ignoring endogeneity results in a severe downward bias. A simulation analysis finds that a 5 per cent increase in concentration would increase prices by 18 per cent and decrease food consumption by 2–5 per cent. Our findings suggest mergers in the food industry could inadvertently lead to adverse effects.

Suggested Citation

  • Vardges Hovhannisyan & Clare Cho & Marin Bozic, 2019. "The relationship between price and retail concentration: evidence from the US food industry," European Review of Agricultural Economics, Oxford University Press and the European Agricultural and Applied Economics Publications Foundation, vol. 46(2), pages 319-345.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:erevae:v:46:y:2019:i:2:p:319-345.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/erae/jby026
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Makaiko G. Khonje & Matin Qaim, 2019. "Modernization of African Food Retailing and (Un)healthy Food Consumption," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(16), pages 1-18, August.
    2. Zeballos, Eliana & Dong, Xiao & Islamaj, Ergys, 2023. "A Disaggregated View of Market Concentration in the Food Retail Industry," USDA Miscellaneous 333546, United States Department of Agriculture.
    3. Stefan Hirsch & David Lanter & Robert Finger, 2021. "Profitability and profit persistence in EU food retailing: Differences between top competitors and fringe firms," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 37(2), pages 235-263, April.
    4. Çakir, Metin & Arita, Shawn & Cooper, Joseph C. & Dong, Xiao & Nemec Boehm, Rebecca L. & Perez Castaño, Ana Melissa M., 2023. "Concentration in Food Retailing, Prices, and Inflation," 2023 Annual Meeting, July 23-25, Washington D.C. 335985, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    5. Rebecca Cleary & Lauren Chenarides, 2022. "Food retail profits, competition, and the Great Recession," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(3), pages 557-578, July.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:erevae:v:46:y:2019:i:2:p:319-345.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/eaaeeea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.