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Abstract
What are the determinants of the commercial channel
choice in the beef producers-processors transactions? The question
refers to the coordination and production control problem associated
to changes in consumer’s awareness of specific attributes in food
products. Two contractual arrangements coexist in this transaction:
direct-contracting and broker-induced transactions Transaction Cost
Economic offers helpful insights to understand the reason for the
development and adaptations of different contractual arrangement
moved by transaction cost economizing perspective. The empirical
analysis is focused in the Uruguayan beef agro-industrial system.
Analysis integrates (i) institutional and organizational changes
in the beef industry; (ii) based on the analysis of the transaction
dimensions (frequency, asset specificity and uncertainty) we address
hypothesis of the determinants of the contractual arrangement in the
beef producers-processors transaction; and (iii) we run a statistical
test of the hypotheses based on a logit model. We used a panel data
with producers-processors transaction from Uruguayan Agricultural
Bureau (77,000 transactions). We confirm the hypotheses of the
determinants of the contractual arrangement choice. The probability
of a transaction being aligned with the direct contractual arrangement increase in transaction with higher asset specificity (i.e., young steer),
lower distance between the producer and the processor, and with
higher frequency of transaction.