Formation of competition in Russian regional food markets: Saratov region case

The extent of development of competition in the regional food market as well as the influence of monopolism on economic condition of agro-industrial complex's brunches and on welfare of consumers have been analysed in this work. There were considered possibilities of utilising modern microeconomic models of assessment of quantitative parameters of development of competition. Level of concentration of production is different for various food sectors of food market that requires different approaches to regulating of these markets. To analyse the extent of development of competitive environment in the sphere of foodstuff production of the region HHI and the total share of the four largest producers of foodstuff were calculated. Despite the big influence of concentration of creation of competitive environment, antimonopolistic control should not be limited to de-enlargement of producers. Such an approach, to our mind, leads to establishing of uneffective productions. Besides the traditional approach to analysis of the extent of monopolism in brunches of the food industry from the stand point of agricultural producers, there have been analysed socio-economic consequences of the monopolism from the stand point of consumers. We tried to quantify the portion of consumer's income, which he/she losses in the Saratov region's food industry. The method of computation is based on evaluation of function of market demand and consumer's welfare change vs change of prices. To estimate of welfare losses the model that is described by V.Requillart, P.Lavergne, V.Simioni (1996) was used. In the work there have been proposed some measures to form the competitive environment in the regional food market. Keywords: competition, food market, consumer's welfare