IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/jafrec/v9y2000i1p1-23..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Retail margins, price transmission and price asymmetry in urban food markets: the case of Kinshasa (Zaire)

Author

Listed:
  • B Minten
  • S Kyle

Abstract

Some African food markets can still seem to operate inefficiently after price liberalisation. This seems mainly due to the existence of significant transaction costs because of small-scale operations, and is influenced by lack of grading, deficient infrastructure and information systems. It is shown in the case of retail markets in Kinshasa that search, supervision and other difficult-to-measure transactions costs are more important in the margin of food products than the measurable marketing costs (e.g., storage, transport). It is also shown through time series analysis that most of the price transmission between wholesale and retail happens in the same week and that price asymmetry, i.e., the different transmission of price increases compared with price decreases, is present for most products. Products characterised by relatively more standardisation and homogeneity are shown to have lower retail margins and to behave symmetrically. A model based on kinked demand curves and search costs might explain this asymmetric price behaviour.

Suggested Citation

  • B Minten & S Kyle, 2000. "Retail margins, price transmission and price asymmetry in urban food markets: the case of Kinshasa (Zaire)," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 9(1), pages 1-23.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:jafrec:v:9:y:2000:i:1:p:1-23.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jae/9.1.1
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Thiago Cacicedo, 2022. "Cartels and asymmetric cost pass-through: evidence from Brazilian gas stations," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 42(4), pages 2034-2042.
    2. Firdu Gemech & John Struthers, 2007. "Coffee price volatility in Ethiopia: effects of market reform programmes," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(8), pages 1131-1142.
    3. Alam, Mohammad Jahangir & Begum, Ismat Ara & Buysse, Jeroen & McKenzie, Andrew M. & Wailes, Eric J. & Van Huylenbroeck, Guido, 2010. "Testing Asymmetric Price Transmission in the Vertical Supply Chain in De-regulated Rice Markets in Bangladesh," 2010 Annual Meeting, July 25-27, 2010, Denver, Colorado 61374, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    4. Ahmed, Osama, 2018. "Vertical price transmission in the Egyptian tomato sector after the Arab Spring," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 50(47), pages 5094-5109.
    5. Escobal, Javier, 2005. "The Role of Public Infraestructure in Market Development in Rural Peru," MPRA Paper 727, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Winter-Nelson, Alex & Temu, Anna, 2002. "Institutional Adjustment and Transaction Costs: Product and Inputs Markets in the Tanzanian Coffee System," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 561-574, April.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:jafrec:v:9:y:2000:i:1:p:1-23.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/csaoxuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.