Imperfect Competition in Agricultural Markets and the Role of Cooperatives: A Spatial Analysis
分析农产品加工市场中合作社对竞争对手定价行为的影响，发现其促进竞争的效果取决于非合作社企业间的竞争关系及合作社的会员与定价政策。
Abstract Important characteristics of many agricultural markets are costly to transport raw products and relatively few processors, one or more of which is often a cooperative. This paper analyzes pricing behavior in these oligopsonistic, spatial markets and focuses specifically upon the conjecture that cooperatives may have a procompetitive effect on the behavior of rival non‐co‐op processors. The existence and magnitude of a procompetitive effect is shown to depend upon a number of structural and strategic factors including competitive relations among the non‐co‐op processors and a cooperative's membership and pricing policies.