Investigating market power in the Belgian pork production chain

Abstract Belgian pork production has faced stagnating prices for decades. It remains unclear whether excessive market power from slaughterhouses or meat retailers has played a role in this trend. While market power studies can reveal some of the market dynamics in this setting, this type of research has not yet been applied to the Belgian pork market. The present paper investigates oligopolies and oligopsonies in the pork production sector. We build a new model that focuses on market power dynamics in the market for live pigs and distinguishes horizontal and vertical market power parameters, b... Mehr ...