Awards issued prior to january 20, 2025, were funded under previous administrations and may not reflect the priorities and policies of the current administration.** this project will develop…

Awards issued prior to january 20, 2025, were funded under previous administrations and may not reflect the priorities and policies of the current administration.** this project will develop conceptual and empirical models of the US agrochemical market as an imperfectly competitive differentiated product industry. The analysis will rely on a novel empirical discrete-choice representation of farm-level demand for agrochemicals that incorporates both observed and unobserved heterogeneity. The estimation of the models will be based on a large proprietary dataset of observed pesticide choices by representative samples of about 10,000 corn and soybean operations per year, over the period 1998-2016. Farm-level demands will be aggregated to market demands and coupled with an explicit formulation of the supply side suitable for a structural representation of nash equilibrium in this imperfectly competitive industry. Simulations of counterfactual equilibria will permit analyses of several policy-relevant questions, including a characterization of the extent of market power in the industry and its evolution over time, the pricing and welfare consequences of mergers and industry consolidation, the competitive effects of patent expiration, and the impacts of possible bans (or taxes, or restrictions) on individual pesticide products.