Impacts of the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster on the Domestic Seafood Price: An Event Study on Food Safety

Abstract

The principal objective of this study is to provide an assessment on the effect of the contaminated water leakage at the Fukushima nuclear power plant on the price of domestic seafood such as pollock and mackerel using the event study. For the analysis, we design an event study by constructing the period before the leakage of contaminated water as the estimation window, and the period from the time of the occurrence of contaminated water leakage as the evaluation window. Based on the long-run equilibrium relationship between domestic seafood price and import price, our study investigates that the price of domestic seafood deviates from the equilibrium relationship with the import price after the leak of contaminated water. The empirical results demonstrate evidence that domestic seafood prices deviates from the equilibrium relationship in the evaluation window after the leakage of contaminated water. Consequently the price deviation indicates abnormal movement, which was found persistent and significant.