dictionary or Wikipedia---use your own words. Consolidation: The process of amalgamating ownership within the market, to one or several firms, with the motivation to both concentrate and increase their economic control and market power over specialized processes or sectors within a given industry’s commodity chains. Example: The industrialization of America’s food system has facilitated the consolidation of both crop and livestock processing, such that as of 1998 four companies (for each commodity) acted as near oligopolies to process 87% of U.S. beef and 76% of U.S. soybeans. (Harper and LeBeau, 115). Economies of Scale: An economic concept that is characterized by a firm’s ability to increase its monetary gains by simultaneously increasing its level of production. The cost advantage a firm reaps by expanding its output quantity can be explained by the inverse relationship between a firm’s cost per individual unit of production and the total number of units a firm produces. In this way, the greater number of units a firm produces the average cost per unit decreases, which results in the firm yielding a greater profit per unit. …show more content…
Neoliberalism: Example: Guthman – Neoliberalism and the Constitution of Contemporary Bodies article