Productivity growth in the Greek banking industry: A non-parametric approach

This paper investigates productivity growth and technical efficiency in the Greek banking industry for the period 1982-1997. It also compares the 1982-92 and 1993-97 sub-periods, since after 1992 the Greek banking sector experienced substantial changes. The Malmquist productivity index and the DEA method are used to measure and decompose productivity growth and technical efficiency, respectively. Productivity growth is higher after 1992. Recent growth is mainly attributed to technical progress, while until 1992 growth is mainly attributed to improvements in efficiency. Furthermore, after 1992, pure efficiency is higher, and scale efficiency is lower, indicating that although banks achieved higher pure technical efficiency, they moved away from optimal scale. Finally, Tobit results show that size and specialization have positive effects on both pure and scale efficiency.Greek banking, efficiency, productivity growth, Malmquist index, DEA

Food Price Volatility and Macroeconomic Factors: Evidence from GARCH and GARCH-X Estimates

This article examines food price volatility in Greece and how it is affected by short-run deviations between food prices and macroeconomic factors. The methodology follows the GARCH and GARCH-X models. The results show that there exists a positive effect between the deviations and food price volatility. The results are highly important for producers and consumers because higher volatility augments the uncertainty in the food markets. Once the participants receive a signal that the food market is volatile, this might lead them to ask for increased government intervention in the allocation of investment resources and this could reduce overall welfare.relative food prices, volatility, macroeconomic factors, GARCH and GARCHX models, Demand and Price Analysis, Marketing, E60, Q10, Q19,

Greek meat supply response and price volatility in a rational expectations framework: A multivariate GARCH approach

This paper examines supply response models in a rational expectations framework for each one of the four major Greek meat markets, i.e. beef, broiler, lamb and pork. A multivariate GARCH model with Cholesky decomposition is used to incorporate price volatility into the rational expectations supply response model for each meat category and as a result the conditional covariance matrix remains positive definite without imposing any restrictions on the parameters. The empirical results confirm the existence of rational behaviour by meat producers in the four examined markets and indicate that price volatility is a major risk factor in Greek meat production while feed prices and veterinarian medicine prices are both important cost factors. Furthermore, the last Common Agricultural Policy reform is found to have a negative impact on the beef and lamb production in Greece.meat supply, price volatility, rational expectations, MGARCH., Agricultural and Food Policy,

Measuring market power in the Greek food and beverages manufacturing industry

This paper measures the degree of market power of the Greek food and beverages manufacturing industry over the period 1983–2007 at the three-digit SIC level. The present study also estimates the “deadweight” loss and the reduction of consumers’ income due to the possible existence of market power in the Greek food and beverages manufacturing industry. Based on Bresnahan’s (1989) conjectural variation model, three different approaches are used to investigate competitive conditions of the Greek food and beverages manufacturing industry. The first approach assesses the extent of market power of the whole industry over the period 1983–2007; the second approach tests the degree of market power in each one of the nine sectors of the industry over the whole period, i.e. 1983–2007; and the third one estimates the extent of market power for the whole Greek food and beverages manufacturing industry for specific sub-periods of the period 1983–2007. The methodology of Dickson and Yu (1989) is adopted to measure the welfare losses. The empirical results indicate the presence of some degree of market power in the whole Greek food and beverages manufacturing industry as well as in each one sector of the industry during the period 1983– 2007 and, as a result, the existence of welfare losses. In addition, the empirical findings support the presence of some degree of market power for each sub-period of the period 1983– 2007 in the whole Greek food and beverages manufacturing industry and the existence of welfare losses.Conjectural variation, Greek food and beverages manufacturing industry, Market power, Welfare losses, Agribusiness, D43, D60, L66, Q10,

Commodity Food Prices: Review and Empirics

The present paper provides a literature review of studies examining the potential causes and consequences of recent surges in food and agricultural commodity prices. Furthermore, this paper uses the structural trend methodology proposed by Koopman et al. (2009) to analyze movements in the IMF monthly commodity food price index for the period 1992(11)–2012(10) and to provide forecasts for the period 2012(11)–2014(12). The empirical results indicate that commodity food prices present seasonality and cyclicality with the longest periodicity of two years. The empirical findings identify certain structural breaks in commodity food price series as well as outliers. These structural breaks seem to capture the trend component of the price series well, while the outliers take account of temporal effects, that is, short-lived spikes. Finally, the presented forecasts show high and volatile commodity food prices

Investigating market structure of the Greek food and beverages manufacturing industry: A Hall-Roeger approach

This paper investigates the market structure of the Greek food and beverages manufacturing industry over the period 1984–2007 at the three-digit SIC level. Based on the Hall-Roeger approach (1995), three models are used to investigate the competitive conditions in the industry. The first model (Hall-Roeger model) assesses the markup in the whole industry over the period 1984–2007. The second model (HallRoeger cross-sectional model) tests the extent of the markup for each of the nine sectors of the industry over the period 1984–2007, whereas the third (Hall-Roeger time-series model) estimates the markup for the whole industry for certain sub-periods of the period 1984–2007. The present paper also investigates factors affecting the markup in the Greek food and beverages manufacturing industry during the period 1984–2007. The empirical results indicate that the whole Greek food and beverages manufacturing industry, as well as each sector of the industry, operates in non-competitive conditions during the period 1984–2007. Furthermore, the industry operates in non-competitive conditions for certain sub-periods of the period 1984–2007. The findings also support the view that the sector size, capital intensity and the number of establishments influence the markup in Greek food and beverages manufacturing during the period 1984–200

Modeling asymmetric price transmission in the European food market

In this study, we employ a multivariate panel error correction model (PVECM) to investigate asymmetric price transmission among the farm, processor, and retail segments of the European food supply chain for the 2005–2016 period. The results indicate that, in both the long- and short-run, retail prices respond more strongly to processor price increases than decreases and the same occurs for processor prices due to farm price changes. Thus, the findings demonstrate the presence of positive asymmetric price transmission in the European food supply chain. Finally, the results of the present study indicate that the food price pass-through varies greatly across product category and across countries, and that the pass-through to producer prices is greater than that to consumer prices

The Relationship Between Energy Consumption and Economic Growth in South and Southeast Asian Countries: A Panel VAR Approach and Causality Analysis

This study investigates the dynamic relationship between energy consumption and economic growth in nine South and Southeast Asian countries (i.e., Bangladesh, Brunei Darussalam, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Thailand) using a panel data framework. The period for the study is 1990–2012, and the World Bank Development Indicators dataset is used. This study applies a panel vector autoregression (VAR) model to provide impulse response functions (IRFs), which enable the impact of shocks to be examined between real gross domestic product (GDP), energy use (ENERGY), real gross fixed capital formation (GFC), and total labor force (LABOR). In addition, panel Granger causality tests are employed to examine the direction of causality between energy consumption and economic growth. The IRFs show that the shocks of all the variables require a long period to reach the long-run equilibrium level and the greatest response of each variable is attributed to its own shock. The panel Granger causality results evidence bidirectional causality effects between energy consumption and economic growth, which supports the feedback hypothesis, meaning that these variables have strong interdependency between each other. Therefore, policy regarding energy consumption should be considered carefully. Keywords: Panel VAR; Panel impulse response functions; Panel Granger causality; SAARC, ASEAN; Energy consumption JEL Classification: C01; C33; O53; Q4

Investigating the international prices of wheat and rice

Abstract This paper investigates the international quarterly prices of wheat and rice from 1983(1) to 2012(4). The empirical analysis takes place with the structural time series methodology which decomposes the price series into their trend, cycle, seasonal and irregular components. The empirical results indicate that wheat prices present cyclical behavior while rice prices except for cyclicality are mainly governed by the irregular component. The results strain the importance of treating wheat and rice like two distinct commodities that require country specific and commodity specific policy measures. Finally, the impact of the shrinking Chinese grain stocks after 2002 is proposed as an important factor that resulted in the 2008 price spike