IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/umcicp/14488.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Antitrust Policy In Italy: Learning From Some Food Cases

Author

Listed:
  • Canali, Gabriele
  • Boccaletti, Stefano

Abstract

After a short presentation of EU and Italian antitrust legislation, this paper examines two recent cases of intervention by the Italian Antitrust Authority (IAA) in the agricultural sector, both dealing with high quality food products requiring a long aging process: two similar kinds of cheese in the first case, 'Parmigiano-Reggiano' and 'Grana Padano', and two hams in the second one, 'Prosciutto di Parma' and 'Prosciutto di S. Daniele'. Recently, all these products have obtained the 'Protected Designation of Origin' according to EU Regulation n. 2081/1992. In both cases, the IAA argued that the existing agreements aimed at programming total supply for each product by means of quotas applied to each individual producer were illegal as well as other collusive behaviors such as price fixing for buying price of fresh meat. The paper also analyzes the key characteristics of these very specific food chains in order to better understand these markets and to discuss both decisions. It is argued that the IAA has taken its decisions more on a 'per se' approach, which in these cases seems to be inappropriate. A more detailed economic analysis, together with the adoption of a 'rule of reason' approach would have suggested different and to some extent opposite decisions. Moreover, the analysis shows that the actual functioning of these markets is not able to stimulate economic agents of these food chains to properly coordinate their production activities in order to reduce or eliminate the cyclical trends of quantity and wholesale prices, which have negative effects both on agricultural and industrial producers and on consumers.

Suggested Citation

  • Canali, Gabriele & Boccaletti, Stefano, 1998. "The Antitrust Policy In Italy: Learning From Some Food Cases," Conference Papers 14488, University of Minnesota, Center for International Food and Agricultural Policy.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:umcicp:14488
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.14488
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/14488/files/c6cana02.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.14488?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Joe S. Bain, 1941. "The Profit Rate as a Measure of Monopoly Power," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 55(2), pages 271-293.
    2. Daniel F. Spulber, 1989. "Regulation and Markets," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262192756, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Angelo Zago, 2004. "Quality Production and Quality Indicators in Intermediate Products," Working Papers 16/2004, University of Verona, Department of Economics.
    2. Braga, Francesco S. & Nardella, Michele, 2003. "Supply Chain Management, Agricultural Policies And Anti-Trust: The Case Of Parmigiano Reggiano And Grana Padano," International Food and Agribusiness Management Review, International Food and Agribusiness Management Association, vol. 5(4), pages 1-15.
    3. Zago, Angelo M., 2002. "Quality Indicators And Intermediate Products: A Non-Parametric Approach," 2002 Annual meeting, July 28-31, Long Beach, CA 19591, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Akbar Ullah & Ejaz Ghani & Attiya Y. Javed, 2013. "Market Power and Industrial Performance in Pakistan," PIDE-Working Papers 2013:88, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics.
    2. Carlo Cambini & Yossi Spiegel, 2016. "Investment and Capital Structure of Partially Private Regulated Firms," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(2), pages 487-515, April.
    3. Cherry, Barbara A., 2014. "Historical mutilation: How misuse of 'public utility and 'natural monopoly' misdirects US telecommunications policy development," 20th ITS Biennial Conference, Rio de Janeiro 2014: The Net and the Internet - Emerging Markets and Policies 106881, International Telecommunications Society (ITS).
    4. Alvaro Montenegro García, 2007. "Fundamentos de la política de la competencia," Documentos de Economía 3930, Universidad Javeriana - Bogotá.
    5. Federico Boffa & John Panzar, 2012. "Bottleneck co-ownership as a regulatory alternative," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 41(2), pages 201-215, April.
    6. Ramello, Giovanni B., 2012. "Aggregate litigation and regulatory innovation: Another view of judicial efficiency," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 63-71.
    7. Gérard Mondello & Evens Salies, 2018. "The unilateral accidenct model under a constrained Cournot-Nash duopoly," Sciences Po publications 14, Sciences Po.
    8. Torsten Steinrücken & Sebastian Jaenichen, 2009. "Preisregulierung zum Schutz der Verbraucher: Wirkungen auf Werbung und Wohlfahrt," Vierteljahrshefte zur Wirtschaftsforschung / Quarterly Journal of Economic Research, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research, vol. 78(3), pages 188-201.
    9. Diaw, K. & Pouyet, J., 2004. "Competition, Incomplete Discrimination and Versioning," Discussion Paper 2004-69, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    10. Hahn, Robert & Evans, Lewis, 2010. "Regulating Dynamic Markets: Progress in Theory and Practice," Working Paper Series 4052, Victoria University of Wellington, The New Zealand Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation.
    11. Yu-Hong Ai & Di-Yun Peng & Huan-Huan Xiong, 2021. "Impact of Environmental Regulation Intensity on Green Technology Innovation: From the Perspective of Political and Business Connections," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(9), pages 1-23, April.
    12. Foreman, R. Dean & Kleit, Andrew N., 2023. "Is prorationing efficiency-enhancing or rent-seeking?: Evidence from a natural experiment," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    13. Elpiniki Bakaouka & Marc Escrihuela-Villar & Walter Ferrarese, 2022. "Endogenous Horizontal Mergers in Homogeneous Goods Industries with Bertrand Competition," DEA Working Papers 96, Universitat de les Illes Balears, Departament d'Economía Aplicada.
    14. Pettus, Michael L. & Kor, Yasemin Y. & Mahoney, Joseph T., 2007. "A Theory of Change in Turbulent Environments: The Sequencing of Dynamic Capabilities Following Industry Deregulation," Working Papers 07-0100, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, College of Business.
    15. Gérard Mondello & Evens Salies, 2016. "Tort law under oligopolistic competition," Sciences Po publications 2016-29, Sciences Po.
    16. Bauer, Johannes M., 2014. "Platforms, systems competition, and innovation: Reassessing the foundations of communications policy," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(8), pages 662-673.
    17. Hua Wang & Nlandu Mamingi & Benoit Laplante & Susmita Dasgupta, 2003. "Incomplete Enforcement of Pollution Regulation: Bargaining Power of Chinese Factories," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 24(3), pages 245-262, March.
    18. Engel, Eduardo & Fischer, Ronald & Galetovic, Alexander, 2005. "Highway franchising and real estate values," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(3), pages 432-448, May.
    19. Martin Gaynor, 1994. "Issues in the Industrial Organization of the Market for Physician Services," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 3(1), pages 211-255, March.
    20. Marie-Laure Cabon-Dhersin & Nicolas Drouhin, 2020. "A general model of price competition with soft capacity constraints," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 70(1), pages 95-120, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Industrial Organization;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:ags:umcicp:14488. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ciumnus.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.