Asymmetric price transmission in the distribution channels of pork: Focusing on the effect of policy regulation of Sunday sales by hypermarkets in Korea.

In this paper, we investigate whether there exists market inefficiency in the distribution channel of pork by estimating a developed partial adjustment model that captures the asymmetric price transmission from wholesale to retail prices. The estimation results show that market efficiency exists for the wholesale and two types of retail markets in the distributional channel of pork in Korea. The government's regulation on Sunday sales by hypermarkets plays a significant role in increasing market efficiency, forcing more competition among hypermarkets, and changing the structure of asymmetric price transmission from wholesale to traditional market prices. The results suggest that the policy goal has been achieved in the traditional market by leading to a more efficient price forming due to a lessened degree of asymmetric price transmission from the wholesale price. Although market inefficiency has been maintained in the distribution channel between wholesale market and hypermarket, the behavior of price setting by hypermarkets has not been influenced by the policy.