Animal disease outbreaks and food market price dynamics: Evidence from regime-dependent modelling and connected scatterplots

The economic impacts of animal disease outbreaks have been widely discussed in the literature. Most authors have centred their attention on estimating the direct costs. Recent studies have shown that the indirect economic effects might lead to equal or even higher welfare losses. This study aims to contribute to this field of research by assessing the effect of an animal disease outbreak on food market price dynamics in Mexico, accounting for the potential effect of an antitrust intervention. We employ a regime-dependent vector error correction model and a connected scatterplot analysis. The results show that both the outbreak and the antitrust intervention caused structural breaks in food market price dynamics between producers and consumers, reflected in an increase in the absolute component of the marketing margin, with serious food security implications.

动物疫病暴发的经济影响已在学术文献中得到广泛探讨。绝大多数研究均聚焦于直接成本的估算。近期研究表明，间接经济效应可能造成同等甚至更为显著的福利损失。本研究旨在为该领域研究作出贡献，通过评估墨西哥动物疫病暴发对食品市场价格动态的影响，并考量反垄断干预的潜在效应。本研究采用区制依赖向量误差修正模型（regime-dependent vector error correction model）与关联散点图分析方法。结果显示，疫病暴发与反垄断干预均引发了生产者与消费者间食品市场价格动态的结构性断点，具体表现为营销价差的绝对组分有所提升，对粮食安全具有重大影响。