The dairy processing industry is the largest subsector in the EU food industry and is characterised by high concentration. We investigate the extent of output market power exerted in EU dairy processing, applying an advanced stochastic frontier approach to estimate firm-level markups of price over marginal cost using data for France, Italy and Spain from 2008 to 2017. We further relate markups to firm characteristics to identify what type of dairy processors possess the highest power in the sector. Our findings only reveal small average deviations from perfect competition but we find considerable heterogeneity of markups within and between the three countries. We identify a strong positive relationship between markup and profitability, though we find firm size and markups to be inversely related. This indicates that small firms operating in differentiated niche markets are able to charge higher markups, thereby ensuring their profitability. This result can serve EU dairy processors for future strategic alignment, and is particularly interesting from a policy perspective as large firms are mostly blamed in the exercise of market power in public and policy debates.

中文翻译：

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乳制品加工的输出市场力量和企业特征：来自三个欧盟国家的证据

乳制品加工业是欧盟食品工业中最大的子行业，具有高度集中的特点。我们使用法国、意大利和西班牙 2008 年至 2017 年的数据，采用先进的随机前沿方法来估计企业层面的价格高于边际成本的加价，调查了欧盟乳制品加工中施加的产出市场力量的程度。我们进一步将加价与企业联系起来特征来确定哪种类型的乳制品加工商拥有该行业的最高功率。我们的研究结果仅揭示了与完全竞争的平均偏差很小，但我们发现三个国家内部和之间的加价存在相当大的异质性。我们发现加价和盈利能力之间存在很强的正相关关系，尽管我们发现公司规模和加价呈负相关。这表明在差异化利基市场运营的小公司能够收取更高的加价，从而确保其盈利能力。这一结果可以为欧盟乳制品加工商未来的战略调整提供服务，并且从政策角度来看特别有趣，因为大公司主要被指责在公共和政策辩论中行使市场力量。