THE STRUCTURE-CONDUCT-PERFORMANCE (SCP) APPROACH FOR THE EVALUATION OF VERTICAL PRODUCTION AND MARKETING SYSTEMS

摘要

The "Structure-Conduct-Performance" (SCP) approach is frequently used in the investigation of agricultural subsectors, especially in the United States. The development of this approach is presented in this contribution. SCP was given its strongest impetus through BAIN's contribution to industrial organization in the sixties. At the beginning, the close adherence to BAIN's concept proved to be unsatisfactory for the investigation of agricultural subsectors because of its orientation on a too small number of economic parameters. Therefore the SCP framework was considerably extended for studies conducted later. This extension was brought about as a result of the the New Political Economy and the Institutional Economy, among others. Furthermore, as theparticipating enterprises and organizations were being treated as a black box and not according to their decision-making behavior, SHAFFER developed a dynamic SCP concept oriented to behavior science which he calls the "Environment - Behavioral response-Performance" (EBP) approach. This concept is discussed more comprehensively in this paper, since it is considered as important for the investigation of agricultural subsectors. Furthermore, an extended SCP approach for the examination of vertical production and marketing systems for horticultural products in developing countries is presented and the advantages and disadvantages of this concept are discussed.