Cost Economies and Market Power: The Case of the U.S. Meat Packing Industry
测量了美国肉类包装行业的规模经济和市场力量，发现行业整合主要由成本经济驱动，但超额利润很少，进一步利用规模经济的潜力已很小。
Increasing size of establishments and resulting concentration in US industries may stem from various types of cost economies. In particular, scale economies arising from technological factors embodied in plant and equipment may be a driving force for such market structure changes. In this case typical market power measures like Lerner indexes can be misleading; if scale (cost) economies prevail, cost efficiencies rather than market deficiencies may actually underlie the observed patterns. In this study I provide measures of scale economies and market power for the US meat packing industry, where increased consolidation and concentration have raised great concern in policy circles. The results suggest that this trend has been motivated by cost economies, but that little excess profitability exists, and on the margin the potential for taking further advantage of such economies has become minimal.