AbstractsBusiness Management & Administration

The social welfare of an economy is maximized when the various economic industriesoperate under conditions of perfect competition. According to the industrialorganization, any deviation from perfect competition leads to several losses for theeconomy and more generally for the society. The investigation of the degree ofmarket power, which comprises the basic objective of the present dissertation, is vitalfor the proper functioning of the economy. Therefore, the present study tests for thedegree of market power and the market power determinants in the twenty-one sectorsof the Greek manufacturing industry over the period 1983-2007. The degree of marketpower is also assessed in the nine sectors of the Greek food and beveragesmanufacturing industry for the period 1983-2007. Moreover, this study investigatesthe markup and the markup determinants for the twenty-one sectors of the Greekmanufacturing industry as well as for the nine sectors of the Greek food andbeverages manufacturing industry over the period 1984-2007. Furthermore, thepresent study estimates the welfare losses in the event of the existence of oligopolypower. In addition, the technical efficiency and its determinants are investigated forthe twenty-one sectors of the Greek manufacturing industry as well as for the ninesectors of the Greek food and beverages manufacturing industry during the period1984-2007.Three different approaches based on the “new empirical industrial organization”(NEIO) were used with the view to measuring the degree of market power andevaluating the competitive conditions. The first approach is the conjectural variationapproach, which provides estimates regarding the actual degree of market power. Thesecond approach is the Hall-Roeger approach and it investigates the market structureand more specifically the markup. The third approach developed comprises anextension of the Hal-Roeger approach and offers contemporaneous estimates aboutthe degree of market power and the markup. Moreover, the welfare losses wereestimated using a formal model of oligopoly. The technical efficiency was measuredfollowing the “data envelopment analysis” (DEA), while its sources were determinedbased on the Simar and Wilson’s Algorithm 1. A very important issue in the presentstudy is the application of the bootstrap technique to the empirical estimations. That iswhy the application of the bootstrapping can lead to an accurate estimation of the sampling distribution without any assumptions on the distribution of the populationfrom which the sample was taken so that the results of the empirical estimates can beaccurate, robust and reliable.The empirical results indicate the presence of some degree of market power andmarkup in all sectors of the Greek manufacturing industry as well as those of theGreek food and beverages manufacturing industry over the period 1983-2007. In otherwords, the findings imply that both the manufacturing industry as well as the food andbeverages industry operated under conditions of imperfect competition implying theexistence of welfare…