The producer, the baker, and a test of the mill price-taker

Abstract

The purpose of the research in this paper was to test for upstream and downstream market power in the US hard wheat milling industry. This is an industry with very high and increasing levels of processing concentration, and one of the industry's largest firms (Archer Daniels Midland) was implicated in price-fixing in US lysine markets. The principal finding is that the hypothesis of competition could not be rejected in both the upstream and downstream markets. No evidence was found of market power in US hard wheat milling and social concerns about the conduct of incumbent firms seem unwarranted at this time.