摘要:The paper attempts to identify the impact of market power in the Hungarian milk chain. Since the conventional conjectural variation approach provides suspicious results the incentives to collude are discussed in an alternative framework. It is argued that the high degree of market transparency, the high frequency of interaction, the low number of large firms which could actually influence market prices, the threat of severe sanctions due to the under-utilization of processing capacities as well as opportunistic behavior make collusive behavior more likely than competitive behavior. The empirical evidence for the period 1998 to 2006 supports this view.