Examining hard coking coal price differentials - A hedonic pricing approach

Hedonic pricing models were developed and estimated econometrically to investigate the impact of quality variables on hard coking coal prices in the Japanese market, The results show that the hedonic pricing approach can provide a useful method for evaluating price-quality relations for non-homogeneous products such as hard coking coal, Based on coking coal contract data, the analysis shows that while quality differentials account for a large part of the price variation in hard coking coal, there is a major difference in the way Australian and Canadian hard coking coals are priced, However, this result does not necessarily imply the existence of discriminatory pricing, This is because the current analysis is limited by its ability to account for the complexity of price negotiation process and the difficulty in quantifying non-quality related variables.