Risk Shifting via Partial Vertical Integration: Beef Packers’ Acquisition of Slaughter Cattle

AAI Advisor and Professor and Alfa Eminent Scholar at Auburn University, Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology, has published new analysis of the cattle markets and the role of the beef packer oligopoly. The paper is titled: Risk Shifting via Partial Vertical Integration: Beef Packers’ Acquisition of Slaughter Cattle. Partial vertical integration of many food and agricultural industries, especially beef packers’ acquisition of slaughter cattle, increasingly raises competition and fairness issues for the non-integrated residual market. While market foreclosure may be a central antitrust concern with full integration, partial integration does not completely foreclose markets, but may shift risks to the residual non-integrated market. This short report presents empirical analysis of risk shifting in the partially integrated market for slaughter cattle.