Asymmetric price transmission in perishable crops value chain: A NARDL approach

Policymakers and economists envisage effective price transmission across markets or stakeholders in supply chains as a vital contributor to market efficiency. The paper explores the vertical price transmission in the perishables supply chain in India using weekly data on farm, wholesale and retail prices collected from main production and consumption markets. We estimate the asymmetries in price transmission using the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lags model and found the asymmetry in both magnitude and speed in the case of wholesale–retail chain of Onion and Potato, asymmetry in magnitude in wholesale–retail chain of Tomato, and asymmetry in speed in farm–wholesale chain of Potato. The results of asymmetric coefficient, long-run elasticity of price transmission, speed of adjustment and implied half-life of disequilibrium indicated that farm–wholesale chain is more efficient than wholesale–retail chain. Further, market chains of Onion and Tomato are more efficient than Potato chains. The magnitude of the adjustment was found to be larger for the long-run positive shock in wholesale–retail market chain of Onion, Potato and Tomato, and it concluded that retailers enjoy an advantage over wholesalers as well as farmers. We draw interesting policy considerations for the perishables sector [EconLit Citations: Q11, Q13, C32].