Date of Award

2017

Document Type

Doctoral Thesis

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

Biological Sciences

First Advisor

Dr. Declan O'Connor

Second Advisor

Prof. Dr. Andreas Thümmel

Abstract

Fundamental changes to the common agricultural policy (CAP) have led to greater market orientation which in turn has resulted in significantly changed price dynamics of EU dairy prices. These changed dynamics include sharply increased price variability of EU farm gate milk prices as well EU dairy commodity prices such as butter and Skimmed Milk Powder (SMP). In addition it was expected that EU dairy prices will align to Word dairy prices. This alignment of prices would also see an alignment of volatility levels which were significantly higher for World dairy prices than EU dairy prices. The aim of this thesis is to analysis the changing price dynamics of EU dairy prices. The results of this thesis are thus of practical interest for farmers, processors and consumers as well as policy makers as they can form the basis for the development of appropriate risk management tools for the EU dairy industry.

The thesis presents four empirical studies which share a common theme in that they investigate the changed dynamics of EU dairy prices. In the first study univariate time series methods are used to analyse farm gate milk price dynamics. The following two studies use multivariate time series methods to analyse price and volatility transmission effects for butter and SMP markets. In particular horizontal (spatial and cross commodity) and vertical transmission (from input to output prices) effects are analysed. Finally the last study as it evaluates the forecasting performance of a number of time series models as applied to selected EU farm gate milk prices. Thus this study focuses on a counter measure to price volatility while the other studies analysed its causes.

Access Level

info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

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