IMPERFECT COMPETITION IN CHINA'S IMPORT MARKET OF ROUNDWOOD AND LUMBER PRODUCTS

China has become the largest importer of roundwood and lumber products in recent years. In this study, the degree of competition among major supplying countries in China's import market is measured through the inverse residual demand elasticity over 1995–2015. Time-series properties of the data are considered through the autoregressive distributed lag model. The analysis reveals that market power exists in roundwood and lumber markets for a few supplying countries. The suppliers in the lumber import market have more market power than those in the roundwood market. Individual countries with substantial market power have more fluctuations in trading volumes.

Russian Market Power in International Wheat Exports: Evidence from a Residual Demand Elasticity Analysis

Russia has emerged as a major wheat exporter since the beginning of the 2000s, and today, it possesses high market shares in several wheat-importing countries in the Middle East and North African region. This has raised concerns that Russia might abuse its dominant market position by pricing above marginal cost. Using a novel dataset with weekly information on Russian wheat exports, we apply the residual demand elasticity method to analyze the pricing behavior of Russia in its two most important export markets, i. e. Egypt and Turkey. Our estimation results reveal that Russia behaves competitively in Egypt while it exerts market power in Turkey with an estimated mark-up of 13.5 %.