Marktstruktur und Preisbildung auf dem ukrainischen Markt für Rohmilch

Transition from the planned to the market economy involved profound changes in Ukrainian economy. Before the liberalization of prices in 1992, milk processing in Ukraine was concentrated in regionally distributed large state milk processing factories. In the meantime, the dairy sector has been privatized. However, the emerging privatization forms were heterogeneous. That is why different kinds of market conduct and, consequently, market performance can be expected, depending on ownership and incentive structures involved. Particular macroeconomic conditions have led to agricultural farms and milk processing factories dragging in conformation to the new situation. The necessary economic reorganization has caused a considerable decrease in milk production. Therefore, the capacity utilization of milk processing industry in the 1990s has strongly diminished. Due to this reason, the increase in average production costs has lowered the sectoral profitability to a significant extent. Although at the beginning of the market-oriented transformation changes and uncertainties of this nature were to a large extent similar for agricultural and food sectors in different Central and Eastern European countries, so far only little is known about market conduct of milk processing enterprises. The descriptive analysis provides evidence of limited market transparency and an influence of regional administrative authorities on regional trade with raw milk via trade restrictions. In such conditions milk processing enterprises were able to gain a regional monopsony or oligopsony position on the raw milk market, and, hence, there is reason to presume that they exercise market power on that market. In addition, in 2002 the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine detected price cartels among milk processing enterprises in some administrative regions of Ukraine. This may be interpreted as a prerequisite for the exercise of market power on the part of milk processing industry. On the other hand, beca(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)