Master of Agribusiness / Department of Agricultural Economics / Michael W. Babcock / Today’s rail industry is the outcome of years of regulatory and technological change. Since the passage of the Staggers Rail Act of 1980 the industry has seen consolidation through mergers and acquisitions. The rail industry in Montana has a rich rail history that includes the completion of a northern east-west route over 100 years ago that provided a commerce route from the interior of the US heartland to the ocean ports in the Pacific Northwest. In those hundred years the rail traffic across Montana has seen dramatic change. In the past, those routes have provided access for Montana freight; today those routes primarily serve the needs of consumers and industries far beyond Montana. While the state’s economy is primarily agricultural, the largest user of rail transportation is the energy industry. This leaves the agriculture industry with a lower priority for access, providing a quandary for rail service for the grain industry in the state. In a state where more than eight national and regional rail carriers once operated, Montana is now only serviced by a small handful, one of which operates over 80% of the rail miles within its borders. Furthermore that carrier provides service through those regions that are almost strictly agricultural, needing the greatest access to the most cost effective means of transportation for the bulk movement of grain. The objectives of this thesis are to develop a model to measure railroad costs and competition; determine the principal cost determinants and measure intramodal competition by comparing the rates in a captive market (Montana) to one with more intramodal competition (Kansas).

Research report submitted to the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Commerce in Development Theory and Policy. / Over one billion people in the world are under-nourished, and over two billion suffer from malnutrition of micro-nutrients – known as ‘hidden hunger’1. This is largely due to the fact that two thirds of the world’s population depend on cereal or tuber based diets (e.g., wheat, maize, potatoes) which tend to satisfy energy demands but not essential micro-nutrients2. The industrialisation of food production systems that occurs as part of the process of economic development has been linked to great improvements in access to food on the one hand, but this has also resulted in major transitions in population-level food consumption and lifestyle patterns. The changes affecting both dietary and physical activity have been termed the ‘nutrition transition’3, which signals the change from consuming large amounts of fibre and low amounts of fat, to a diet comprised of highly processed, high-energy foods. Developing countries now face a ‘triple burden’ in terms of overcoming under-nutrition of micro and macro nutrients, as well as addressing over-consumption related to the ‘nutrition transition’ that accompanies economic development4. Given this setting, this paper sets out to understand how the industrialisation of the wheat to bread chain in South Africa has influenced population consumption patterns and to what extent consumer interests have been marginalised in the pursuit of industrial efficiencies during the development of this chain. This will be done using a ‘Systems of Provision’ approach which enables a vertical analysis of the processes leading up to consumption, whilst allowing for the incorporation of historically defined, context-specific influences on chain development and consumption patterns, including political, socio-economic and cultural factors, which other vertical approaches, such as the Global Value Chain framework do not enable. / MT2017

This thesis is motivated by the impacts of contemporary political and economic issues such as microeconomic reform and regulatory control on the Australian wheat industry. Firstly, the suggestion of whether the AWB (International) Ltd commands market power and secondly, that the objectives of the AWB Ltd have changed since semi-privatisation of the Australian Wheat Board under the Wheat Marketing Act, 1989. The AWB (International) Ltd’s ability to price discriminate is a key component to the retention of the single desk regulatory arrangement for the export of Australian wheat. Due to data restrictions the market power of the AWB (International) Ltd has not been determined within this thesis. To complement this traditional approach, a more novel proposal is developed to determine the effect of microeconomic reform on the Australian wheat industry. Conceptualising the change of the AWB Ltd’s objectives as a shift from revenue maximization to profit maximization, this study examines the impact of such a change on the pricing policies of a multi- market price-setting firm. More specifically, this study investigates, for two hypothetical objective functions, a risk averse firm’s price-setting behaviour in an “overseas” and a “domestic” market, given differing costs of supply, uncertain demand functions and differing price elasticities of demand in each market. The aim is to generate empirically testable hypotheses relating to the impact of a change of objectives on pricing behaviour.