The impact of warehouse services on spatial and intra-temporal agricultural market integration: The case of the Ethiopian commodity exchange's warehouse services

Abstract

The Ethiopian commodity exchange market (ECX) was launched in 2008, and since then it has rolled out warehouse services for various commodities in different markets. In this study, our objective is to examine the effect of ECX's warehouse services on spatial and intra-temporal integration of agricultural markets. To this effect, we apply the difference-in-difference approach on monthly retail price collected from sample markets. The results show that the warehouse service provision is associated with improved spatial market integration for chickpea and haricot bean, but not in the case of soya bean, sesame, and coffee. The results further show the warehouse service has no statistically significant impact on intra-temporal market integration except for sesame. The implications of the study results are discussed. [EconLit Citations: D4, Q1, O1].