The research of the Department of Management in Agribusiness focuses on an empirical industrial economic analysis of firms along the food supply chain. This involves:
- Providing a deeper understanding of the competitiveness and strategic actions of agribusiness firms and deriving implications for the economic functioning of the food value chain. This includes investigating the drivers of vertical and horizontal integration, production flexibility, innovation, efficiency, and profitability of firms operating in the food processing industry and food retail sector.
- Analyzing the effect of oligopolistic market structures at different stages of the food supply chain on the performance of firms in up- and downstream sectors with a particular focus on power imbalances between food retailers and processors.
- Evaluating the impact of market risks occurring within the agricultural sector on the performance of firms in downstream sectors
- Consumer acceptance of food product innovations with a focus on meat substitutes and reformulated products
Our research has a strong empirical orientation which is based on a broad range of microeconomic models that account for interactions across agribusiness sectors as well as state of the art econometric methods.Examples of recent research projects can be found under publications.
