The efficiency of the whisper-bid auction in price determination of marine fishes in Dalahican fish port, Philippines, 2016

Date

6-2016

Degree

Bachelor of Science in Agricultural Economics

College

College of Economics and Management (CEM)

Adviser/Committee Chair

Jose M. Yorobe, Jr

Abstract

The study determined the efficiency of the whisper-bid auction in price determination of marine fishes at the Dalahican Fish Port, Philippines. Specifically, it determined the marine fish market characteristics at the Dalahican Fish Port: identified the institutional key players and their arrangement in the marketing of marine fishes analyzed the current price information and its manner of determination in the marine fish market analyzed the stability of prices sold through bulungan and evaluated the performance of the Dalahican Fish Port market. The Market-structure Conduct-Performance (SCP) Approach was mainly applied. Both primary and secondary data are analyzed using descriptive analysis, market concentration analyses and marketing costs and margins analyses through measures of central tendencies. Results of the Herfindahl-Hirschman index analysis showed that there is a moderate to high market concentration in the port in the past year and high market concentration on the day of data collection. This is further reaffirmed by the use of a three-firm concentration ratio analysis. The Lerner?s Index showed also that there is high market concentration in the marketing of tamban which indicates high market power among the fishing firms and an imperfectly competitive market. There are various barriers to entry and exit for the fisherman and the brokers. Information on prices is also not made available to all key participants. The descriptive analysis on the conduct of the fisherman, brokers, and buyers further proved this, and showed that the participants encounter problems with standardization and payments. The analysis on marketing costs and margins showed that there is high variability in the prices of tamban sold through auction. The marketing costs of the fisherman are more variable than that of the retailers, while the retailers have more variable marketing costs than the brokers. However, the brokers have the most variable profit of all. The marketing margins from the fishermen to break are found to be most volatile. The analysis on the share of consumer?s peso also showed that the highest variability is found in the share of the brokers, which represents the auction itself. Hence, these shows that at the brokers? level there is already high inefficiency in terms of price stability. Only three of the 14 transactions are within the range of the prevailing prices given by the Philippine Fisheries Development authority (PFDA) and five out of the eight transactions that are valued higher than the given range are transactions for the major fishing firms who are brokers themselves. Evidences also show that brokers have an incentive to underprice the fishermen. These results determined that the whisper-bid auction is not an efficient tool in determining prices in the port, and the following are thus recommended creation of merges between small fishermen through cooperatives, or the creation of their own fishing company changing auctions into open bidding and use of an electronic bidding system use of proper standardization of the fishes sold in tubs and administration of trainings, seminars and information channels that show indicators of market conditions in order to get more idea on prices for the day.

Language

English

Location

UPLB College of Economics and Management (CEM)

Call Number

LG 993.5 2016 A14 S26

Document Type

Thesis

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