"Members' attitudes and perceptions play a significant role in their behavior toward their organization and the performance of such organizations. This study examines the role of these "people" factors in a sample of fruit and vegetable growers' cooperatives in the Mid-Atlantic United States. Although the Theory of Planned Behavior is used as the framework of analysis, the objective of this study was not to test the theory. Study findings provide additional insights into how cooperative members' beliefs and knowledge may shape their attitudes and the consequent behavior. Given the gradual decline of both cooperative memberships and the number of cooperatives in the United States and other countries, a good understanding of members' attitudes and behaviors is necessary because a cooperative's success may depend on it." Copyright 2007 Canadian Agricultural Economics Society.

In this article we estimate and test for the degree of oligopoly power and economies of scale in forty food and tobacco industries using the New Empirical Industrial Organization (NEIO) framework and four-digit SIC data. Lerner indices and elasticities of scale are compared throughout the entire food and tobacco industries. T-tests verify that all but three of these industries exert statistically significant degrees of oligopoly power and that over 82% of these industries exhibit nonconstant returns to scale. The empirical results also provide estimates of the price elasticities of demand for each industry. Copyright 1997, Oxford University Press.

No abstract

T his fnaper computed olieiy-induced aUocatiue tfjciency losses in 38 US food and tobacco manufacturing industries using conduct, demand and cost paramdm estimated with a Nnu Empirical Industrial Organisation (hEI0) approach. AUocntivr tfjcicniy loss rsh'mates in these indushiu amounted to $15.2 billion OT ovrr five pCr cent o/ sak fw 1987. Statistical tests showrd that these losses are gmrally h i g h than ~' o u s estimates, possiblj' dtie to the allowance of non-ronslant marginal costs and revised estimates of dnnond elasticities and conduct. ' In the United States, the principal policy instrument against monopoly and monopolisation is Section 2 of the Sherman Act, enacted in 1890, largely bwd on the British common-law CWR decisions against rrUllint of vrde (Schem and Rw 1990). Two agencies, the Feded Trde Commission (RC) and the Antitrust Division of the Department of Juwice have responsibilities to enforce competitive policies (more commonly known u antitruu enforcement) in the United States. Thew agencies, particularty the FTC arc similar to the UKMonopolio Commission or the Federal Cartel Omce of Germany. For a survey of major upecu of the antitrust policies in the United Sates, the United Kingdom, Germany. Japan and France among otheo (see Boner and Kruger. 1991). Oligopoly Power and AUocntiw E f j c i m 9 in US Fobd and T&m Indwhia 435 anticompetitive behaviour (Mueller, 1983; Connor cf aL. 1985; Bhuyan and Lopez. 1997),the US food and tobacco manufacturing sectors offer a reasonable context in which to analyse allocative efficiency losses from oligopoly power.As shown by Petenon and Connor (1995) and Bhuyan and Lopez (1995), the welfare losses are critically determined by assumptions about the modes of conduct, marginal costs. and demand elasticities. O n e serious limitation of previous studies that measured welfare losses in these sectors is that they used industry profitability rates, such as pricecost margins, to measure market power in order to compute allocative efficiency losses (e.g., Cisser, 1982; Willner, 1989; Peterson and Connor. 1995; Bhuyan and Lopez, 1995). ' Another limitation of past studies is that they assumed constant marginal costs. which likely biased their loss estimates for industries that exhibit either increasing or decreasing returns to scale.' Finally, the food industry demand elasticities used in previous studies (e.g., the elasticities provided by Pagoulatos and Sorensen, 1986, based on 1957-72 data), are external to the data used in the computation of the losses or are simply assumed, e.g.. Parker and Connor (1979) assumed demand elasticities to be 0.5 for the entire sector and Willner (1989) assumed these elasticities to be 1.0 for all Migit SIC (standard industrial classification) food industries.An alternative is to measure oligopoly power using the 'new empirical industrial organisation' (NEIO) approach since this approach does not rely on accounting definitions of oligopoly power (such as profitability rates), and it explicitly parameterises industry conduct. The N...

American consumers spend almost half of their food dollars on food away from home (FAFH) despite potential harmful effects of eating out more frequently. This study examines how consumers' attitudes toward FAFH and their personal preferences influence their behavior of eating food away from home. This study differs from previous work by using the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) to model consumers' FAFH behavior. Empirical testing of consumers' FAFH behavior reveals several interesting and important findings. Results show that negative attitudes toward FAFH reduced consumers' frequency of eating out, whereas the availability of healthy food, good service, and convenience in restaurants increased consumers' frequency of eating out. The policy implications of such study findings are discussed. [EconLit citations: D120]. (C) 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.