1. Pricing heterogeneity and transaction mode: Evidence from the French fish market.
- Author
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Wolff, François-Charles and Asche, Frank
- Subjects
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SEAFOOD markets , *PRICES , *INTERNET auctions , *FISH meal , *PRICE regulation , *HETEROGENEITY , *PRODUCT attributes - Abstract
• This paper investigates the influence of transaction mode on fish prices • Data includes 40 million transactions achieved in France between 2010 and 2018 • The average price gap is 1.7 euro per kilo between auctions and OTC sales • Once heterogeneity is controlled for, the price differential is very low (-1.7%) • The two sale methods co-exist for fish markets because of the low price gap While information technology has led to increased market integration, in many markets there are still significant heterogeneity associated with factors such as product characteristics, market location, market lots, transaction mode and buyer and seller characteristics. Using a data set of 40 million observations of up-streams fish sales in Atlantic France, we use the rich attribute information to investigate the extent to which the price differences in a highly heterogenous market can be explained, with a particular focus on the importance of transaction mode. While 78% of the quantity is sold at auctions, the remainder are over-the-counter transactions and this share is increasing. Estimation of hedonic price regressions controlling for fish attributes, local market, buyer and seller heterogeneity show that there is a price differential of 1.7% between the two transaction modes. This result remains robust when taking into account the endogeneity of the sale method through an exact matching of auction and over-the-counter transactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2022
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