Detecting threshold effects in price transmission


Book Description

The analysis of price transmission plays a key role in understanding markets integration. This helps identify the nature of the relationship between geographically distant markets and cross-commodity price transmission, as well as the impact of liberalization policies and the identification of regions exposed to systemic shocks. This technical note contributes to the debate between symmetric and asymmetric price transmission and proposes to present the traditional and new approaches for detecting threshold effects in price transmission while focusing on their advantages and limitations. There is no one-size-fits-all method to detect threshold effects in price transmission. Experts need to select a combination of elements (context of study, the economy under consideration, data availability…) to justify the relevancy of their choice. Beyond the presentation of the methods for detecting thresholds in price transmission, we perform an application in the case of the rice market in Senegal. The results support the evidence of an asymmetric price transmission between world and domestic prices in the short-run and a symmetric transmission in the long-run.




Threshold Effects in Price Transmission


Book Description

Recent studies into price transmission have recognized the important role played by transport and transaction costs. Threshold models are one approach to accommodate such costs. We develop a generalized Threshold Error Correction Model to test for the presence and form of threshold behavior in price transmission that is symmetric around equilibrium. We use monthly wheat, maize, and soya prices from the United States, Argentina, and Brazil to demonstrate this model. Classical estimation of these generalized models can present challenges but Bayesian techniques avoid many of these problems. Evidence for thresholds is found in three of the five commodity price pairs investigated.




Threshold Effects in Price Transmission


Book Description

Recent studies into price transmission have recognized the important role played by transport and transaction costs. Threshold models are one approach to accommodate such costs. We develop a generalized Threshold Error Correction Model to test for the presence and form of threshold behavior in price transmission that is symmetric around equilibrium. We use monthly wheat, maize, and soya prices from the United States, Argentina, and Brazil to demonstrate this model. Classical estimation of these generalized models can present challenges but Bayesian techniques avoid many of these problems. Evidence for thresholds is found in three of the five commodity price pairs investigated.




A dynamic spatial model of agricultural price transmission


Book Description

Spatial interactions are essential drivers of price transmission mechanisms and may significantly affect any food’s policy outcomes. However, spatial aspects seem to be generally overlooked when analyzing price transmission. This paper attempts to fill this gap by highlighting the usefulness of spatial interaction and models for market integration analysis. A spatial dynamic panel datamodel is presented and applied to Niger’s millet market. Empirical results show that (1) the millet market is partly integrated, (2) locally traded commodities (millet and sorghum) are linked by a cross-commodity price transmission, (3) most imported cereals prices, which for Niger is maize and rice, did not affect the millet market, and (4) no cross-regions price transmissionoccurred for the millet market.




Price Transmission Analysis in the Italian Feed Industry


Book Description

More than half of total production costs for dairy producers is represented by feed, whose price level strongly depends on maize price patterns. However, the literature paid no attention to this vertical price transmission dynamics. This paper tries to fill the gap by investigating the interrelationship between Italian maize and feed prices, proposing a novel two-regime threshold-cointegration model where regimes are triggered by an observable transition variable. The latter accounts for both fundamental and non-fundamental drivers that recent literature found to be potential triggers influencing the transmission process. Empirical results suggest that the impact of non-fundamentals, especially financialization and energy price, is quite weak, whereas market fundamentals still play a significant role in shaping the price transmission dynamics. Furthermore, the cointegration relationship is found to be non-continuous, with several interruptions.







Combining Industrial Organization and Econometric Methods in Price Transmission Analysis


Book Description

The degree of competition and level of price transmission in food markets have important effects on the welfare level of consumers and producers. Thus, substantial attention has been paid to the analysis of price transmission in food markets. Traditionally, price transmission analyses have focused on applying econometric methods to assess whether prices are cointegrated, the order of cointegration and the adjustment speed. In contrast, less attention has been devoted to the theoretical underpinnings, the structure of the market and the interpretation of results. To address this gap, this st...




Consumer Information and Price Transmission


Book Description

We investigate how consumer information affects price adjustment in the Austrian retail gasoline market. Our measure of consumer information is obtained from detailed census data on commuting behavior, as commuters can freely sample prices on their commuting route and are thus better informed about prices. A threshold error-correction model suggests that prices adjust more quickly if cost shocks exceed certain thresholds. Parametric and semi-parametric regressions show that a larger share of informed consumers increases both transmission speed and pass-through elasticity. Better informed consumers reduce the asymmetry in thresholds, but have no effect on the asymmetry in the speed of adjustment.




Non-Linear Price Transmission Between Gasoline Prices and Crude Oil Prices


Book Description

This paper analyses the adjustment of gasoline prices in response to shocks in crude oil prices. We show that the nature of the dynamic relationship between crude oil and gasoline prices changes in February 1999. For the pre-February 1999 and the post-February 1999 sample we estimate a Threshold Vector Error-Correction Model for US gasoline prices and crude oil prices. We find evidence for a threshold effect after February 1999. The results indicate that firms adjust prices only if the deviations from the long-term equilibrium between the price of crude oil and gasoline is large enough. However, it is not the crude oil price that adjusts but the price of gasoline. Unlike the pre-February 1999 period, short-run changes in both prices tend to reinforce each other driving up the price of crude oil and gasoline.




A Measure of Marketing Price Transmission in the Rice Market of Taiwan


Book Description

The goal of this paper is to test whether changes in the marketing margin between the farm and the retail prices can result in an asymmetric relationship between the farm and the retail prices in the rice market of Taiwan. By separating the transaction cost variation into two regimes, this paper utilizes a two-regime TVECM with the error correction term serving as the threshold variable to create a non-linear threshold model. The empirical results show that when the marketing margin is lower than the threshold value, the market system operates freely and there is feedback between the farm and retail prices. However, when the marketing margin is higher than the threshold value, the government intervenes in the market and the causality between the farm and retail prices no longer exists. The conclusions are as follows. Changes in the marketing margin can cause the asymmetric price transmission between the farm and retail prices in Taiwan's rice markets; therefore, ignoring the effect of the marketing margin could lead to errors in the models. When the marketing margin is higher than the threshold value, the government intervenes in the market and the causality between the two prices is broken.