A Spatio-temporal Analysis of Agricultural Prices: An Application to Colombian Data
The series Working Papers on Economics is published by the Office for Economic Studies at the Banco de la República (Central Bank of Colombia). The works published are provisional, and their authors are fully responsible for the opinions expressed in them, as well as for possible mistakes. The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Banco de la República or its Board of Directors.
This paper studies whether the geographical separation of markets constitutes a factor that helps explain the dynamics of agricultural prices. To do this, we employ a highly disaggregated dataset for Colombia that consists of weekly observations on wholesale prices for 18 agricultural products traded in markets scattered around the country. The sample period spans for almost a decade. According to our results, which are based on generalised impulse response functions, distance (and thus transportation costs) is a factor that helps explain the speed at which prices adjust to shocks in other locations, thus confirming that price adjustments take longer for markets farther apart.
