Estimating Market Power and Pricing Conduct in a Product-Differentiated Oligopoly: The Case of the Domestic Spaghetti Sauce Industry

This paper develops a simultaneous-equations panel data econometric model to obtain point estimates of market power and pricing conduct in a representative product-differentiated, oligopolistic food market. The importance of this class of markets is recognized given its prevalence in the food and fiber system, especially for final consumer food products. The $1.3 billion domestic spaghetti sauce industry is featured. Although the results indicate firms exert limited market power, a portion of this power is derived from tacit price collusion. A higher degree of price collusion was found among brands within a market segment than between segments.