The Economic Impact of Government Purchases on the Price Volatility of Korean Dried Red Pepper

Abstract

Purpose – Unstable vegetable prices have been one of the major concerns in Korean agricultural and food marketing system. The Korean government has implemented a number of policy instruments, including government purchasing programs in order to alleviate fluctuations in vegetable prices. The economic impact of policy instruments has been assessed based on the average monthly price change rate before and after the implementation of the policy. However, this approach failed to provide a net impact of policy measures on price stabilization in the vegetable markets, as policy impacts could not be successfully distinguished from other effects on price changes in the vegetable market. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the net impact of the government purchasing program on the price volatility of dried red pepper which is considered one of the major vegetables in Korea. Research design, data, and methodology – This study develops a monthly dynamic partial equilibrium model of Korean dried red pepper market. Behavioral equations in the model were estimated by OLS and synthetic method based on the annual and monthly time series data from 1993 to 2015. The model is first simulated to yield actual dried red pepper market conditions in 2015 as a baseline and then compared it to the scenario assuming that there were no government purchases of dried red pepper in 2015. Results - According to the ex-post scenario analysis using the developed model, without the government procurements in 2015, the average monthly price change rate and the value of coefficient of variation of dried red pepper in 2015 would be respectably 7.9 percent and 0.10. It is relatively higher than the actual average monthly price change rate and the value of coefficient of variation of dried red pepper in 2015 which were respectively 1.7 percent and 0.06. Conclusions - The ex-post simulation results in this study shows that if there were no government purchases of dried red pepper in 2015, the dried red pepper market would have had much higher volatile price movements. The results of this study would provide useful information for future price stabilization policy of vegetable markets in Korea