Are the determinants of markup size industry-specific? The case of slovenian manufacturing firms

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to identify factors that affect the pricing policy in Slovenian manufacturing firms in terms of the markup size and, most of all, to explicitly account for the possibility of differences in pricing procedures among manufacturing industries. Accordingly, the analysis of the dynamic panel is carried out on an industry-by-industry basis, allowing the coefficients on the markup determinants to vary across industries. We find that the oligopoly theory of markup determination for the most part holds for the manufacturing sector as a whole, although large variability in markup determinants exists across industries within the Slovenian manufacturing. Our main conclusion is that each industry should be investigated separately in detail in order to assess the precise role of markup factors in the markup-determination process.