市场整合与贸易成本——基于中国粮食市场空间价格传导的新证据

Market Integration and Trade Costs:New Evidence from Spatial Price Transmission on China's Grain Markets

空间市场整合对保障粮食安全具有重要的政策含义。本文利用门限自回归模型和中国粮食市场的价格数据对空间分隔市场的价格传导和市场整合状况进行了研究。分析发现,中国粮食市场的价格均衡调整速度较慢,地理距离是影响价格调整速度和贸易成本的重要因素,市场间的贸易成本空间分隔受到市场、运输、信息和政策等多方面条件的影响,中国粮食市场尚缺乏有效的空间套利活动。为了高效率低成本地实现粮食安全,需要深化体制改革、利用市场机制、降低贸易成本以推动粮食市场整合。

Spatial market integration has important policy implications on food security and other issues.Previous studies on China's grain markets obtained inconsistent results,and most of them ignored transaction costs.In this study,we employ daily prices of major staple foods to estimate transaction costs and speed of adjustment among spatially separated markets in China,and analyze the their determinants.We find that the speed of adjustment to equilibrium in China's grain markets is slow.The result shows that distance between north and south and marketing infrastructure can affect price adjustment speed and transaction costs.We also find that China's grain markets lack efficient spatial arbitrage activities.Further reform towards market liberalization is needed to reduce transaction costs,promote market integration and achieve food security with high efficiency and low cost.