Vertical and spatial price transmission in the Mexican and international cattle and beef market

Abstract

From 2000 to 2019, the Mexican beef subsector has undergone significant structural changes; the most important was the concentration of both production and marketing stages. In 2019, the Mexican Federal Commission of Competence revealed that, Mexican households' income diminished between 16 and 31 % due to a lack of market efficiency. In the case of meat, the reduction may be up to 98 %. In this context, the objective of this study was to examine the degree of spatial price transmission between national and international live cattle prices and the vertical transmission between live cattle prices and carcass meat prices to evaluate market efficiency. The econometric approach consists of the estimation of a vector error correction model, using monthly beef real prices, for the period 1990-2019. Findings from this research provide information for decision-makers and stakeholders in this industry: these comprehend unidirectional transmission of international beef prices to domestic beef prices and from farm price to processor price. Also point to the existence of asymmetric price transmission, which is related to whether cattle and beef prices are increasing or decreasing. Results indicate that a long-run single cointegration relationship exists between international and farmer prices, and between processor and farm price. The direction of price transmission tends to go from producers to processors and from international price to farmer price. When the international price increases, the speed of adjustment tends to be significantly slower, in contrast to when the international price decreases, resulting in a significantly faster rate of adjustment.