When switching costs cause market power: Rubber processing in Indonesia
研究了农产品供应商转换买家时的成本如何让买家获得市场势力，并用印尼橡胶市场数据估算出转换成本约为农场价格的3%，导致财富从供应商向买家转移。
Abstract Suppliers of agricultural output incur switching costs (SCs) when choosing new buyers, allowing buyers to exercise oligopsonistic market power, as SCs help buyers to mark down prices for incumbent suppliers. This article conceptualizes the idea of SCs and suggests an empirical strategy for quantifying them through an estimation of farm supply to specific buyers. The model incorporates price differences between buyers, revealing buyers' anticipations of suppliers' SCs. The approach is applied to the Indonesian rubber market, employing a data set of daily purchasing prices and less frequent quantities of individual sales instances. Results indicate that SCs exist and are at about 3% of the farm gate price, leading to substantial redistribution from suppliers to buyers of agricultural output.