This article examines the effects of increasing market concentration level in the U.S. nitrogen fertilizer industry. Results indicate that the costs of market power are greater than the benefits of market concentration, in terms of manufacturing cost efficiency. To provide a stable nitrogen fertilizer supply at a relatively low price, it may be necessary to control natural gas price and/or reduce new import barriers from Middle East and former member states of the Soviet Union, where low cost gas is produced as a byproduct. Keywords: Nitrogen fertilizer, oligopoly, economies of size, market power, cost-efficiency.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association) in its series 2002 Annual meeting, July 28-31, Long Beach, CA with number
19674.
Length: Date of creation: 2002 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:ags:aaea02:19674
Contact details of provider: Postal: 555 East Wells Street, Suite 1100, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53202 Phone: (414) 918-3190 Fax: (414) 276-3349 Email: Web page: http://www.aaea.org More information through EDIRC
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (AgEcon Search).
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: