An assessment of the impacts of recent food market shocks on food prices using price transmission analysis

Abstract

Food markets worldwide have been strongly affected by recent shocks such as food scares and the outbreak of the biofuels market. The present thesis makes a significant contribution to the existing literature on price transmission by shedding light on the impacts that these food market shocks have had on food price levels and stability. To do so, recent developments in time series econometrics are applied. Three specific objectives have been pursued in three papers that constitute the main body of the dissertation. In the first paper, a regime-switching vector error correction model is applied to monthly price data to assess the impact of BSE outbreaks on price relationships and patterns of transmission among farm and retail markets for bovine in Spain. Different regimes within the model represent different price behavior under different market conditions. To evaluate whether different magnitudes of the BSE food scare elicit different food price responses, a BSE food scare information index is developed and used as the variable determining regime-switching. Results suggest that BSE scares affect beef producers and retailers differently. While consumer prices are not found to respond to BSE scares, producer prices are adjusted as a response to the crisis. The magnitude of the adjustment is found to depend on the magnitude of the food scare. In the second paper, a bivariate smooth transition vector error correction model is applied to monthly poultry price data to analyze the effects that avian influenza has had on price transmission along the Egyptian poultry marketing chain. As in the previous paper, in order to reflect consumer awareness of the …