Statutory agricultural marketing boards operate in all Australian States to facilitate the orderly marketing of farm products. The boards are variousIy composed of producer and government or consumer representatives who are charged with developing policies which reconcile the interests of these groups. Some of the boards act as legalized monopolies, with power to control production, acquire the product, and set wholesale and retail prices. Others perform only regulatory or co-ordinating functions. Most boards have a range of powers between these extremes.Many State marketing boards set prices on the domestic market, usually at higher levels than would be obtained on a free market. Any particular pricing policy will have implications for consumers, producers, and general economic efficiency. The implication for consumers is potential consumption foregone, for producers it is potential monopoly gains not appropriated, and for society as a whole it is the possible misallocation of resources into and within the industry. The extent to which any group is favoured by pricing decisions depends upon the board's enabling legislation, the degree of protection on the local market, the demand characteristics of the commodity, and the voting power of the various groups represented on the board.The purpose of this paper is to examine the short-run (annual) implications for consumers, producers, and economic efficiency of the pricing decisions of a particular marketing board. The criteria are those of economic-surplus theory. The method is the econometric analysis of annual time series. The conclusions are thus circumscribed by the limitations of both types of analysis.
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