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Market Prices

The availability of good quality market price data plays a fundamental role in promoting market transparency, competitiveness and a more equitable sharing of benefits across market participants. Market price data are central in fostering agricultural development and in improving food security, especially for small-scale producers and traders who sometimes have limited access to and understanding of this type of information.

Despite the relevance of price data, the practices and methodologies adopted for price data collection, analysis and dissemination in many countries suffer from various limitations. Recognizing the existing knowledge and capacity gaps, the AMIS Secretariat has implemented different research activities, including:

  1. Reviewing existing literature and selecting relevant methodologies and guidelines to be used by market price data producing agencies, in particular in developing countries
  2. Developing specific guidelines on statistical methodologies for the collection, processing and dissemination of market price data
  3. Developing a Quality Assessment Framework for agricultural market information systems, to be used for evaluation purposes etc.
  4. Improving knowledge on price transmission between international and local markets

Related Resources

Mar 2021
The first wave of COVID-19 containment measures raised concerns about the capacity of markets to withstand the shock without generating distortions. In this analysis, researchers move beyond the aggregated effects which hide internal dynamics in the countries. Analyzing 789 retail markets in 47 low to middle income countries, the results shows that more stringent policy responses increase food prices for integrated and less remote markets but not for segmented markets. The impact of the stringency of policy responses on food prices is mediated by reductions in mobility and moderated by markets' pre-Corona dependency on trade.
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