This paper estimates the relationships between market structure and the Lerner index of monopoly constructed from price data on processed food products sold through grocery stores. A theoretical model of a differentiated oligopoly specifies two determinants of price-cost margins: the Herfindahl-Hirschman index of seller concentration adjusted for the elasticity of demand and the industry advertising-to-sales ratio. The results indicate that the three principal determinants of price-cost margin variation, in order of their impacts, are: advertising intensity, elasticity of demand, and concentration. Previous structure-performance studies that did not incorporate the elasticity of demand were probably misspecified.

We use extended ARCH and GARCH models to examine the differences in the behavior of the first two moments of the price distribution during collusive and competitive phases of two recently discovered conspiracies, citric acid and lysine. According to our results, the conspirators managed to raise prices by 9 and 25 cents per pound in the short-run relative to non-collusive periods. Also, the variance of prices during the lysine conspiracy was lower and the variance of prices during the citric acid conspiracy was higher than during more competitive periods. The proposed methodology may be used for antitrust screening and prosecution purposes.

The frequent introduction of avowedly novel products is a common marketing strategy of leading food manufacturers. Over half of all new packaged consumer goods are foods or beverages, yet little is known about the amounts, patterns, and causes of product proliferation. Alternative definitions and analytical models of product proliferation are reviewed, focusing on those derived from Hotelling spatial-equilibrium theory. A simple regression model is used to test the relationship of market structure to the number of new food products introduced. The results verify that food product proliferation is a mode of industry conduct arising from markets characterized by differentiated oligopoly.

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This paper presents and analyses economic data on 167 international cartels that were discovered by antitrust authorities after January 1990. The median cartel had five corporate members and generated $1.2 billion in sales during the collusive period. Nearly 40% of affected sales occurred in the organic chemicals industries, half of which were sold to food, feed, and agricultural firms. On average, the cartels lasted nearly six years, but average durability declined by more than 60% from the early 1990s to the early 2000s. In the early 2000s more than 20 international cartels were discovered each year, a rate six times faster than the early 1990s. The large size and longevity of these cartels, when combined with average monopoly overcharges of 28%, cause a great deal of monetary harm to buyers. Discovered cartels have met with increasingly harsh sanctions since 1990. Government authorities have imposed a total of $7.1 billion in fines on 870 companies and 62 executives, of which the United States (27%) and European Union (51%) are the major governments responsible. Private antitrust suits resulted in settlements totaling at least $3.4 billion. Some 32 executives have been imprisoned. Statutory penalties, if imposed at maximum levels, would extract about 12 times cartel overcharges, a level sufficient to deter most firms from forming or joining a cartel. However, applying optimal deterrence concepts to the characteristics of modern international cartels allows one to deduce that current antitrust enforcement is inadequate to deter cartel formation. This conclusion follows from low probabilities of detection, overly generous leniency policies in finesetting, the absence of private suits outside North America, the inability of most indirect purchasers to recover damages, and generally weak anti-cartel enforcement in Asia and Latin America.