Price Leadership in UK Food Retailing: Time Series Representation and Evidence

This paper analyses the price of a common basket of products sold in each of the UK’s four largest retail chains to assess propositions regarding price leadership. Data used in this investigation represent weighted average prices of a large group of branded and non-branded products purchased nationally at weekly intervals over a three and half year period and cover purchases in 37 product categories. The data are analysed using vector autoregressive methods, a convenient framework for a statistical investigation of this sort, owing to the time series properties that the price data exhibit. The paper introduces the concepts of strategic and tactical price leadership. Since these correspond to parameter restrictions in the vector autoregression, the statistical tests have a economically meaningful interpretation. While the empirical findings are preliminary, they indicate that Tesco, the largest of the retail chains, acts as price leader in both the strategic and tactical senses.

An extended 'Feder'' model of dualistic growth

Feder's (1982) model of dualistic growth is derived in levels, suitable for time-series analysis and (i) extended to contexts where aggregate input data are unavailable (ii) sectoral externalities and productivity differentials are generalised in a two- and three-sector (agriculture-manufacturing-services) context.

PRICE LINKAGES IN THE INTERNATIONAL WHEAT MARKET

This paper brings time series techniques to bear on the relationships between the prices of the principal types of wheat traded internationally. In all, the relationships between eleven wheat prices (categorised by wheat quality, harvest date and port of despatch) are scrutinised to uncover the structure of the wheat market implicit in the behaviour its prices reveal. The statistical evidence supports the notion of a highly integrated market that is segmented according to wheat strength-the principal determinant of end-use. Three segments are identified: a market for 'strong' (bread-making) wheat, another for 'weak' (confectionary products-making) wheat and a third for medium strength wheat suitable for unleavened breads and noodles. Whilst informative, market integration - detected by cointegration among prices - is not altogether surprising, yet the presence of cointegration implies a causal structure, which is of more cogent interest. Among a number of complementary techniques, linkages are uncovered using an innovative concept of irreducible cointegration vectors (Davidson 1998, Barassi et al 2001) which provides new evidence on price linkages. Statistical evidence is robust and not test-dependent. Specifically, we find a dominant price leader in each sub-market. In terms of its pricing, the EU is found to play a passive role in the world market, confirming a widely held view.Wheat market, price linkages, irreducible cointegration vectors, Crop Production/Industries, International Relations/Trade,

The Fiscal Effects of Aid in Ghana

aid, fungibility, fiscal response, impulse response

Retail Food Prices: Insights from Supermarket Scanner Data

The advent of the barcode and laser scanning technology provides a potentially rich source of data (so-called, scanner data) on the purchases of the nation’s food consumers. Using scanner data obtained from all the major UK supermarkets, this paper offers a glimpse at the prices of some of the purchases that make up the nation’s shopping trolley. The price data analysed belong to over 500 barcode-specific products recorded at weekly intervals over a two and a half year sample period in the largest seven national retail chains, giving nearly a quarter of a million prices in all. Characteristics of the prices are reviewed with an eye to their dispersion over time and across retailers and this provides insights into pricing strategy and the nation’s cheapest retailer. The data also allow the extent, magnitude and duration of promotional discounting (‘sales’) to be explored in greater detail than has hitherto been possible in the UK, and a summary of findings will be provided, some of which may even inform the way you shop

Do Sales Matter? Evidence from UK Food Retailing

This paper assesses the role of sales as a feature of price dynamics using scanner data. The study analyses a unique, high frequency panel of supermarket prices consisting of over 230,000 weekly price observations on around 500 products in 15 categories of food stocked by the UK’s seven largest retail chains. In all, 1,700 weekly time series are available at the barcode-specific level including branded and own-label products. The data allows the frequency, magnitude and duration of sales to be analysed in greater detail than has hitherto been possible with UK data. The main results are: (i) sales are a key feature of aggregate price variation with around 40 per cent of price variation being accounted for by sales once price differences for each UPC level across the major retailers are accounted for; (ii) much of the price variation that is observed in the UK food retailing sector is accounted for by price differences between retailers; (iii) only a small proportion of price variation that is observed in UK food retailing is common across the major retailers suggesting that cost shocks originating at the manufacturing level is not one of the main sources of price variation in the UK; (iv) own-label products also exhibit considerable sales behaviour though this is less important than sales for branded goods; and (v) there is some evidence of coordination in the timing of sales across retailers insofar as the probability of a sale at the UPC level at a given retailer increases if the product is also on sale at another retailer.Sales, price variation, retail, Consumer/Household Economics, Demand and Price Analysis, L16, L66, Q13.,