IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cdh/ebrief/118.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Pulling the Plug on Monopoly Power: Reform for the Canadian Wheat Board

Author

Listed:
  • Richard Pedde

    (Farmer)

  • Al Loyns

    (University of Manitoba)

Abstract

Change is in store for the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB), which has the legal authority to purchase all Western Canadian wheat and barley produced for export and for domestic human consumption. The CWB defends the continuation of this legal authority on the premise that by selling together, Western Canadian farmers exert more market power in wheat markets and receive higher returns than they could if competing against each other. However, the declining global market share of Canadian wheat makes it increasingly unlikely that the CWB is able to exert market power: the CWB is a price taker in many markets. In the absence of strong evidence that the CWB is able to achieve its policy goal of higher returns to farmers because of the compulsory purchase of grains, its monopoly over Western Canadian wheat and most barley sales should be reconsidered with an eye to ending it.

Suggested Citation

  • Richard Pedde & Al Loyns, 2011. "Pulling the Plug on Monopoly Power: Reform for the Canadian Wheat Board," e-briefs 118, C.D. Howe Institute.
    • Handle: RePEc:cdh:ebrief:118
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cdhowe.org/public-policy-research/pulling-plug-monopoly-power-%C2%A0reform-canadian-wheat-board
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. W. H. Furtan & D. F. Kraft & E. W. Tyrchniewicz, 1999. "Can the Canadian Wheat Board Extract Monopoly Rents? The Case of the Spring Wheat Market," International Journal of the Economics of Business, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 6(3), pages 417-437.
    2. Peter G. Helmberger & Sidney Hoos, 1963. "Economic Theory of Bargaining in Agriculture," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 45(5), pages 1272-1280.
    3. Kranti Mulik & Won. W. Koo, 2011. "Substitution between U.S. and Canadian Wheat by Class," Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics/Revue canadienne d'agroeconomie, Canadian Agricultural Economics Society/Societe canadienne d'agroeconomie, vol. 59(4), pages 417-433, December.
    4. Sylvain Charlebois & Richard Pedde, 2008. "A bushel Half Full: Reforming the Canadian Wheat Board," e-briefs 68, C.D. Howe Institute.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Serfas, D., 2018. "an ex-post econometric analysis of the abolishment of the canadian wheat board," 2018 Conference, July 28-August 2, 2018, Vancouver, British Columbia 277286, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    2. Sarker, Rakhal & Ratnesena, Shashini, 2014. "Revealed Comparative Advantage and Half-A-Century Competitiveness of Canadian Agriculture: A Case Study of Wheat, Beef and Pork Sectors," Working Papers 165675, Canadian Agricultural Trade Policy Research Network.
    3. Joseph M. Santos, 2014. "Back to the futures: An assessment of market performance on the early Winnipeg Grain Exchange," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 47(4), pages 1426-1448, November.
    4. Ryan Cardwell & Pascal L. Ghazalian, 2020. "“The Effects of Untying International Food Assistance: The Case of Canada” — Authors' Response to Comment," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 102(4), pages 1081-1082, August.
    5. Ryan Cardwell & Pascal L. Ghazalian, 2020. "The Effects of Untying International Food Assistance: The Case of Canada," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 102(4), pages 1056-1078, August.
    6. Folwell, Raymond J. & Mittelhammer, Ronald C. & Wang, Q., 1998. "An Empirical Bargaining Model Of Price Discovery: An Application To The Washington/Oregon Asparagus Industry," International Food and Agribusiness Management Review, International Food and Agribusiness Management Association, vol. 1(4), pages 1-13.
    7. Colin A. Carter & Shon M. Ferguson, 2020. "State trading deregulation and prairie durum wheat production," Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics/Revue canadienne d'agroeconomie, Canadian Agricultural Economics Society/Societe canadienne d'agroeconomie, vol. 68(1), pages 107-116, March.
    8. Derek G. Brewin, 2016. "Competition in Canada's Agricultural Value Chains: The Case of Grain," Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics/Revue canadienne d'agroeconomie, Canadian Agricultural Economics Society/Societe canadienne d'agroeconomie, vol. 64(1), pages 5-19, March.
    9. Daniel Atsbeha & Dadi Kristofersson & Kyrre Rickertsen, 2015. "Broad breeding goals and production costs in dairy farming," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 43(3), pages 403-415, June.
    10. Furtan, William Hartley, 2005. "Transformative Change in Agriculture: The Canadian Wheat Board," Estey Centre Journal of International Law and Trade Policy, Estey Centre for Law and Economics in International Trade, vol. 6(2), pages 1-13.
    11. Schmitz, Troy G. & Gray, Richard S., 2000. "State Trading Enterprises And Revenue Gains From Market Power: The Case Of Barley Marketing And The Canadian Wheat Board," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 25(2), pages 1-20, December.
    12. Baek, Jungho & Mattson, Jeremy W. & Koo, Won W., 2009. "Analyzing Effects of the U.S. Duties on Canadian Hard Red Spring Wheat," Estey Centre Journal of International Law and Trade Policy, Estey Centre for Law and Economics in International Trade, vol. 10(2), pages 1-22.
    13. Cardwell, Ryan & Ghazalian, Pascal L., 2022. "State-trading enterprises and productivity: Farm-level evidence from Canadian agriculture," 96th Annual Conference, April 4-6, 2022, K U Leuven, Belgium 321159, Agricultural Economics Society - AES.
    14. Yulan Wang & Baozhuang Niu & Pengfei Guo & Jing-Sheng Song, 2021. "Direct Sourcing or Agent Sourcing? Contract Negotiation in Procurement Outsourcing," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 23(2), pages 294-310, March.
    15. Nogueira, Lia & Walters, Cory, 2015. "Welfare Implications of Wheat Breeding Programs," Cornhusker Economics 306913, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Department of Agricultural Economics.
    16. Brandow, George E., 1977. "Policy for Commercial Agriculture, 1945-71," A Survey of Agricultural Economics Literature, Volume 1: Traditional Fields of Agricultural Economics 1940s to 1970s,, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    17. Folwell, Raymond J. & Mittelhammer, Ronald C. & Wang, Changru, 1997. "A Bargaining Model of Price Discovery in the Washington/Oregon Asparagus Industry," 1997 Annual Meeting, July 13-16, 1997, Reno\ Sparks, Nevada 35950, Western Agricultural Economics Association.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Governance & Public Institutions; Canadian Wheat Board (CWB); monopoly;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q13 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - Agricultural Markets and Marketing; Cooperatives; Agribusiness
    • Q17 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - Agriculture in International Trade
    • F13 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade Policy; International Trade Organizations

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:cdh:ebrief:118. 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: Kristine Gray (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cdhowca.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.