Production Contracts and Food Quality: A Transaction Cost Analysis for the Italian Durum Wheat Sector

Abstract

Agribusiness firms requiring a consistent supply of high quality agricultural raw materials have increasingly adopted production contracts to coordinate their supply chains. The present work is aimed to shed light on the role played by sources of asset specificity and uncertainty related to quality strategies in the diffusion of contractual arrangements within the Italian durum wheat sector. To this purpose, factor analyses and probit regressions are estimated in data collected among durum wheat producers. The findings confirm that the role of asset specificity is negligible in presence of staple crops. Moreover, they reveal that experience, transparency and technological stability are all relevant aspects that reduce uncertainty and, in turn, trigger the adoption of production contracts as a governance solution for durum wheat.