IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bdi/opques/qef_107_11.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Retail sector concentration and price dynamics in the euro area: a regional analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Emanuela Ciapanna

    (Banca d'Italia)

  • Concetta Rondinelli

    (Banca d'Italia)

Abstract

We conduct a regional analysis of the relationship between market concentration and price dynamics in the grocery retail sector, focusing on a sample of five categories of goods belonging to the 12 COICOP aggregation and on a panel of countries that includes Germany, Spain, Finland, Italy, Austria and Portugal. Using a unique census-type dataset on retailers, we construct Herfindahl-Hirschman indices of concentration at the buying group, parent company and individual shop level for a sample of 118,540 large grocery stores and we study the association between these measures and regional price changes. Our results point to a positive association between retail market concentration and price growth in food and beverages, alcohol and tobacco and miscellaneous goods in the time span 2003-2010 at the buying, parental group and store level for the pooled sample of countries. The relation reverses sign for clothing and footwear and household equipment. This evidence is robust to different specifications of concentration indices.

Suggested Citation

  • Emanuela Ciapanna & Concetta Rondinelli, 2011. "Retail sector concentration and price dynamics in the euro area: a regional analysis," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 107, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    • Handle: RePEc:bdi:opques:qef_107_11
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.bancaditalia.it/pubblicazioni/qef/2011-0107/QEF_107.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. V. Baugnet & D. Cornille & E. Dhyne & B. Robert, 2009. "Regulation and competition in the distribution sector in Belgium," Economic Review, National Bank of Belgium, issue iii, pages 33-57, September.
    2. Dobson, Paul W & Waterson, Michael, 1997. "Countervailing Power and Consumer Prices," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 107(441), pages 418-430, March.
    3. Ronald W. Cotterill, 2007. "Market Definition and Market Power in the British Supermarket Industry," Food Marketing Policy Center Research Reports 098, University of Connecticut, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Charles J. Zwick Center for Food and Resource Policy.
    4. Chen, Zhiqi, 2003. "Dominant Retailers and the Countervailing-Power Hypothesis," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 34(4), pages 612-625, Winter.
    5. Barros, Pedro Pita & Brito, Duarte & de Lucena, Diogo, 2006. "Mergers in the food retailing sector: An empirical investigation," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 50(2), pages 447-468, February.
    6. Sofia Berto Villas‐Boas, 2009. "An empirical investigation of the welfare effects of banning wholesale price discrimination," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 40(1), pages 20-46, March.
    7. Benabou, Roland, 1992. "Inflation and markups : Theories and evidence from the retail trade sector," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 36(2-3), pages 566-574, April.
    8. Przybyla, Marcin & Roma, Moreno, 2005. "Does product market competition reduce inflation? Evidence from EU countries and sectors," Working Paper Series 453, European Central Bank.
    9. von Ungern-Sternberg, Thomas, 1996. "Countervailing power revisited," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 14(4), pages 507-519, June.
    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. Castellari Elena & Bonanno Alessandro & Sckokai Paolo, 2019. "Food Retail Liberalization, Food Retail Structure and Food Prices: The Italian Case," Journal of Agricultural & Food Industrial Organization, De Gruyter, vol. 17(2), pages 1-11, November.
    2. Liesbeth Colen & Zohra Bouamra-Mechemache & Victoria Daskalova & Kjersti Nes, 2020. "Retail alliances in the agricultural and food supply chain," JRC Research Reports JRC120271, Joint Research Centre.
    3. Ciapanna, Emanuela & Rondinelli, Concetta, 2014. "Retail market structure and consumer prices in the euro area," Working Paper Series 1744, European Central Bank.
    4. Eliana Viviano & Luciana Aimone Gigio & Emanuela Ciapanna & Daniele Coin & Fabrizio Colonna & Federica Lagna & Raffaele Santioni, 2012. "The retail trade sector and the food industry in Italy," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 119, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.

    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. Ciapanna, Emanuela & Rondinelli, Concetta, 2014. "Retail market structure and consumer prices in the euro area," Working Paper Series 1744, European Central Bank.
    2. Alf Vanags & Morten Hansen, 2007. "Competition in the Latvian and Baltic Grocery Retail Markets," SSE Riga/BICEPS Occasional Papers 3, Baltic International Centre for Economic Policy Studies (BICEPS);Stockholm School of Economics in Riga (SSE Riga).
    3. Allain, Marie-Laure & Avignon, Rémi & Chambolle, Claire, 2020. "Purchasing alliances and product variety," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    4. Symeonidis, George, 2010. "Downstream merger and welfare in a bilateral oligopoly," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 230-243, May.
    5. Johansen, Bjørn Olav, 2012. "The Buyer Power Of Multiproduct Retailers: Competition With One-Stop Shopping," Working Papers in Economics 03/12, University of Bergen, Department of Economics.
    6. Romero, Jaime & Cruz-Roche, Ignacio & Charron, Jean-Philippe, 2020. "The myth of price convergence under economic integration: A proposed explanation for the difference in food prices across European countries," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 267-276.
    7. Xinxin Li & Yuxin Chen, 2012. "Corporate IT Standardization: Product Compatibility, Exclusive Purchase Commitment, and Competition Effects," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 23(4), pages 1158-1174, December.
    8. Inderst, Roman & Wey, Christian, 2007. "Buyer power and supplier incentives," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(3), pages 647-667, April.
    9. Zhiqi Chen & Hong Ding & Zhiyang Liu, 2016. "Downstream Competition and the Effects of Buyer Power," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 49(1), pages 1-23, August.
    10. Andre Jungmittag, 2018. "The Direct and Indirect Effects of Product Market Regulations in the Retail Trade Sector," JRC Research Reports JRC112222, Joint Research Centre.
    11. Ghosh, Arghya & Morita, Hodaka & Wang, Chengsi, 2014. "Horizontal mergers in the presence of vertical relationships," MPRA Paper 60275, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Chiara Fumagalli & Massimo Motta, 2008. "Buyers’ Miscoordination, Entry and Downstream Competition," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(531), pages 1196-1222, August.
    13. Qiu Zhao, 2019. "The Influence of Buyer Power on Supply Chain Pricing with Downstream Competition," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(10), pages 1-19, May.
    14. Dennis Rickert & Jan Philip Schain & Joel Stiebale, 2021. "Local Market Structure and Consumer Prices: Evidence from a Retail Merger," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 69(3), pages 692-729, September.
    15. Suchan Chae & Paul Heidhues, 2004. "Buyers' Alliances for Bargaining Power," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 13(4), pages 731-754, December.
    16. Wang, Shinn-Shyr & Rojas, Christian & Lavoie, Nathalie, 2010. "Buyer Market Power and Vertically Differentiated Retailers," Working Paper Series 57165, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Department of Resource Economics.
    17. Hao Wang, 2005. "Discount Store," Microeconomics Working Papers 22713, East Asian Bureau of Economic Research.
    18. Inderst, Roman, 2007. "Leveraging buyer power," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 25(5), pages 908-924, October.
    19. Noriaki Matsushima & Shohei Yoshida, 2018. "The Countervailing Power Hypothesis when Dominant Retailers Function as Sales Promoters," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 86(5), pages 665-680, September.
    20. George Symeonidis, 2008. "Downstream Competition, Bargaining, and Welfare," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 17(1), pages 247-270, 03.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    market concentration; price dynamics; buying group; parent company; regional Herfindahl-Hirschman indices.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L1 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance
    • L4 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies
    • L8 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services
    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation

    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:bdi:opques:qef_107_11. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bdigvit.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.