Black Sea and World Wheat Market Price Integration Analysis

In 2008-10, Russia and Ukraine together exported an average of 29 million tons of wheat per year, and have become important players in the international wheat market. This research summarizes the short- and long-run wheat price dynamics between Ukraine and Russia, and other major wheat exporters-the United States, European Union (EU), and Canada-from 2004 to 2010. Tests of market price co-integration (Johansen maximum likelihood test and residual-based tests) as well as threshold error correction techniques were performed for this purpose. The results suggest that Russian wheat prices were co-integrated with EU and U.S. wheat prices but not with Canadian wheat prices. Ukrainian wheat prices were found to be co-integrated with French wheat prices only. The estimated long-run wheat price transmission elasticities were estimated to be equal to 1.04 between Russian and French (a representative country of the EU) wheat prices, 1.16 between Russian and U.S. wheat prices, and 1.05 between Ukrainian and French wheat prices. We also found the short-term relationships between the co-integrated series to be statistically significant. Price adjustments in all co-integrated prices were found to be symmetric.