Price Volatility in Food Commodities in India- An Empirical Investigation

Abstract

In the recent years, agricultural commodities are characterized by a high degree of price volatility in India. These variations in prices that do not reflect market fundamentals and thus become problematic as they can lead to incorrect decisions. The higher food prices are disastrous especially for the poor where large amount of their total income is being spent on basic foodstuffs. Poor smallholders, who do not have access to credit may have difficulty financing the crucial inputs needed to plant again and stay in business. Thus, both the welfare of the family and the viability of the farm may be threatened by excessive volatility. Uncertainty may also result in sub-optimal investment decisions in the longer term. The study observed that persistent volatility shocks were quite visible in the monthly price volatility in spot price of gram in Delhi, lentil grain (bold) in Indore and rapeseed and mustard oil in Sri Ganganagar market. Empirical results of GARCH Model revealed that the value of first-order autoregressive term ARCH and value of first-order moving average term GARCH were observed to be significant in the price series pertaining to all the years. The quite large value of GARCH term in comparison to ARCH term showed reasonably long persistence of volatility. The persistent volatility was also quite high in selected commodities for most of the years.