Power Market in The Polish Food Sector Branches and The Competition Policy

Increasing market power decreases consumers' welfare, instead of a role of the competition policy is to limit market power expansion, protect market competition and improve welfare. The research questions were in which branches of the Polish food sector the market power was the highest, how was it changing within branches, and what are the role and possible actions in the framework of competition policy. In order to measure the exerted market power monopolistic markups were utilized. Their levels in the period 2000- 2013 were estimated with the Roeger method, despite their fluctuations in that period were obtained by taking advantage of labor markups. The yearly data on food sector enterprises come from forms collected by the Polish Central Statistical Office. It turned out that special focus should be put on the concentration processes and price setting in manufacturing of sugar and beer, whereas the most variable market structures appeared in fruit and vegetable juices production, milk processing and cheese production, production of homogenized groceries and dietary food, and processing and preservation of potatoes. The possible policy directions were indicated based on literature review.