SPATIAL INTEGRATION ON THE HUNGARIAN MILK MARKET

The geographical separation of markets is of a special importance in agriculture, as often, agricultural products are bulky and/or perishable, and the place of consumption may be different from that of production, implying possibly expensive transport costs (SEXTON ET AL., 1991). The imperfectly integrated markets may send wrong price information signals to producers and other actors of the marketing chain, resulting incorrect production and marketing decisions. The aim of the article is to map the horizontal integration on the milk market in the Hungarian milk market using up-to-date Vector Error Correction (VECM) and Threshold Error Correction (TEVCM) methods.horizontal integration, transition economy, threshold cointegration, Livestock Production/Industries, Marketing,

Milk Retail Sales Patterns in a Transition Economy. The Case of Hungary

Modern theories of sales make conflicting predictions about the temporal pattern of sales, which we test using retail chain level data. In this paper, we focus on the retail sale patterns of two retail milk prices in a New Member State (NMS), Hungary using weekly data across eight retail chain between 2005 January and 2008 June. We employ a battery of empirical tests, to try a number of sale theory hypotheses. First, we present summary statistics, histograms, and correlations of prices and sales from which we conclude that no theory of sales fully describes sale patterns and price distributions. Second, we apply vector autoregressive analysis and Granger tests of temporal ordering (”causality tests”) to determine whether the sale of one retail chain is followed in a predictable way by the sale of another retail chain or its own later sales. Our results suggest a dual retail market structure. Finally, we employ panel cointegration to test confirm that durable goods should have qualitatively different pricing pattern than less-durable goods. Similarly to Berck et al. (2007) we fail to see a clear difference between storable milk and boxed milk patterns.Sales, retail prices, milk, Livestock Production/Industries,

The Influence of Macroeconomic Variables on the Hungarian Agriculture

This paper focus on the time adjustment paths of the exchange rate and prices in response to unanticipated monetary shocks following model developed by Saghaian et al. (2002). We employ Johansen's cointegration test along with a vector error correction model to investigate whether agricultural prices overshoot in a transition economy. The empirical results indicate that agricultural prices adjust faster than industrial prices to innovations in the money supply, affecting relative prices in the short run, but strict long-run money neutrality does not hold.agricultural prices, exchange rates, monetary shocks, overshooting, transition economy, Demand and Price Analysis, C32, E51, P22, Q11,

Marketing and pricing dynamics in the presence of structural breaks - the Hungarian pork market

The study of marketing margins and price transmission on various commodity markets has been a popular research topic of the past decades (see MEYER, VON CRAMONTAUBADEL, 2004, for a recent survey), however with a few exceptions these studies focused on developed economies. In this paper we examine the above phenomena on the: Hungarian pork market. The Johansen (maximum likelihood) or Engle and Granger (two step) cointegration tests do not reject the no-cointegration null hypothesis between the Hungarian pork producer and retail price series. Therefore we apply the Gregory and Hansen procedure with recursively estimated breakpoints and ADF statistics, and found that the prices are cointegrated with a structural break occurring in April 1996. Exogeneity tests reveal the causality running from producer to retail prices both on long and short run. Homogeneity tests are rejected, suggesting a mark-up pricing strategy. Price transmission modelling suggests that, price transmission on the Hungarian pork meat market is symmetric on the long, but asymmetric on the short-run, i.e. processors, wholesalers or retailers might take temporary advantage should price changes occur.price transmission, marketing margin, pricing, structural breaks, Hungarian pork market, Demand and Price Analysis, Marketing,

Survival and Growth of Family Farms in a Transition Country – The Hungarian Case

The paper investigates the validity of Gibrat’s Law in Hungarian agriculture. We use FADN data between 2001 and 2007 and employ quantile regression techniques to test the validity of Gibrat’s Law across quantiles. The Law is strongly rejected for all quantiles, providing strong evidence that smaller farms tend to grow faster than larger ones. We provide a number of socio-economic factors that can explain farm growth. Of these we found that total subsidies received by farm and far operator’s age are the most significant factors.Gibrat’s Law, family farm, quantile regression, transition agriculture, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Consumer/Household Economics, P32, Q12, Q19,

Price transmission on the Hungarian milk market

There has been little systematic analysis of the extent to which organic farming policies have influenced growth in the organic sector. Analyses of organic farming policy instruments, for the most part, provide extensive and detailed reviews of instruments applied either in a single country or across countries. Hence, there is a great need to examine systematically whether there is a relationship between the introduction of organic farming policies and the growth of the organic food sector, and whether particular designs of organic farming policies are more effective than others. In this paper, we take the first step in the endeavour of analysing the effects of organic farming by undertaking an econometric analysis of the relationship between organic farming policies in Denmark and the UK and their effects on the number of farmers and growers converting to organic production.Price transmission, Gregory-Hansen cointegration, Hungarian milk market, Demand and Price Analysis, Livestock Production/Industries,

GIBRAT'S LAW REVISITED IN A TRANSITION ECONOMY. THE HUNGARIAN CASE

The paper investigates the validity of Gibrat's Law in Hungarian agriculture. Employing various specifications including OLS, two-step Heckman model and quantile regressions our results strongly reject Gibrats Law for full sample. Estimations suggest that small farms tend to grow faster than larger ones. However, splitting the sample into two subgroups (corporate and family farms) we found different results. For family farms however, only OLS regression results reject Gibrat's Law, whilst the two-step Heckman models and quantile regression estimates support it. Finally, for corporate farms our results support the Law regardless of the method or size measure used. Our results indicate that there is no difference between family farms and corporate farms according to the growth trajectory.Gibrat's Law, selection bias, quantile regression, transition agriculture, Farm Management, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

SOCIO-ECONOMIC STATUS AND THE STRUCTURAL CHANGE OF DIETARY INTAKE IN HUNGARY: A PANNEL STUDY

Typically, big changes in the economic system lead to alterations on the disposable income of families and thus on their spending for different type of products, including food. These may imply, in the long run, a structural modification of the quality of diet of the population. After the fall of the socialist system, in the past two decades Central and Eastern European countries, including Hungary, went through a profound, and sometimes difficult transition of their political and economic systems, shifting from a centralized planned economy to an open market economy, and more importantly, the European Union integration. Economic change in lower-income and transitional economies of the world appears to coincide with increasing rapid social change. With respect to nutrition there is evidence that those countries are changing their diets and that these changes seem to be happening at a faster pace than ever before. In this paper we analyze the evolution of Hungarian dietary patterns based on socio-economic status (SES) data between 1993 and 2007. Data allows to define and profile several clusters based on aggregated consumption data, than to inspect the influence of SES variables using OLS and multinominal logit estimations.Transition economy, food consumption patterns, cluster analysis, logit analysis, Agricultural and Food Policy, Consumer/Household Economics, Demand and Price Analysis, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Food Security and Poverty, Health Economics and Policy,

Monetary Impacts and Overshooting of Agricultural Prices in a Transition Economy: The Case of Slovenia

The paper focus on the time adjustment paths of the exchange rate and agricultural producer and industrial prices in response to unanticipated monetary shocks following model developed by Saghaian et al. (2002). We employ Johansen's cointegration test along with a vector error correction model to investigate whether agricultural producer prices overshoot in a transition economy. Results indicate that agricultural prices adjust faster than industrial prices to innovations in the money supply, affecting relative prices in the short run, but strict long-run money neutrality does not hold. The impulse response analysis shows that an exogenous shock to the money supply has a significant and volatile effect on the three price variables. Initially, both the agricultural producer prices and industrial prices undershoot their long-run path. Industrial prices recover in the fourth, agricultural producer prices in sixth month. The extent of overshooting in agricultural prices is twice as large as for exchange rates or industrial prices. This indicates that in the case of monetary shocks the sectors associated with flexible changes bear the burden of adjustment vis-à-vis the sectors with sticky changes. The exchange rate pass-through on agricultural producer prices revealed by the forecast error variance analysis indicates the relatively greater importance of the exchange rate than the money supply in explaining the expected variation of the agricultural producer price. This is consistent with floating exchange rate policy, while agricultural trade policy for sensitive products has been more restricted until Slovenia joined the European Union.agricultural prices, exchange rates, monetary shocks, overshooting, transition economy, Financial Economics, C32, E51, P22, Q11,

Price transmission in the Hungarian vegetable sector

In this paper we analyse price transmission for the carrot, parsley, tomato, green pepper and potato markets. Although there is a dual farm structure dominated by small individual farms, our results imply that price information flows from the producer to the retail level for potatoes, parsley and carrots. Our results also suggest that farmers do not merely accept prices, but can actually influence market prices. Tomato and green pepper prices have large transmission elasticities, and causality runs from the retail to producer level. It therefore follows that tomato and green pepper producers tend to accept prices and that the sector’s prices are determined by upper market levels (processors, wholesalers, retailers). These results are reinforced by the fact that vegetable producers sell a large share of their production through procurement and processing, and therefore are more dependent on the upstream industries, and thus cannot influence prices. For all vegetables in this study the short-run price transmission is symmetric while on the tomato market the long-run price transmission is asymmetric. Results indicate that the tomato market is not competitive and efficient; therefore processors, wholesalers, and retailers are capable of exercising market power, and can instantly transmit producer price increases while just slowly and partially transmitting producer price decreases.Hungarian vegetable sector, producer prices, price transmission, Demand and Price Analysis, Crop Production/Industries,