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The recent shocks in global prices of cereals and the spillover effects of trade restrictive policies adversely affected domestic markets, particularly in the net food importing countries such as Afghanistan. This paper investigates the effects of 2007–2008 spikes in global wheat prices on the dynamics of price transmission and long-run equilibrium relationship between global and domestic wheat markets. The findings indicate that domestic and global wheat markets may be cointegrated in Regime-I (pre-break), Regime-II (post-break) and the overall sample period. Moreover, the elasticity of price transmission and speed of adjustment towards the long-run equilibrium are substantially different between the two regimes, i.e., they appear to be larger in Regime-I as compared to Regime-II. Similarly, the effect of a shock in global wheat prices on domestic wheat markets might be long-lasting in Regime-I but transitory in Regime-II. This research underlines the need for mitigating the adverse effect of spikes in global wheat prices on domestic wheat markets in the context of a landlocked net food importing country.

This paper examines cointegration and the difference in the extent of price transmission, and speed of adjustment between global and domestic prices of high and low quality rice. Unit root tests, cointegration tests and error correction models are employed in the analysis. While there are no comparable studies in the literature, the findings of this study indicate that the dynamics of price transmission may be different between high and low quality rice markets. That is, the extent of price transmission appears to be larger for the global prices of low quality rice whereas the speed of adjustment to the long-run equilibrium may be faster for domestic prices of high quality rice. Moreover, a shock in the global prices of low quality rice may have a long-lasting effect on domestic prices of low quality rice as compared to their high quality counterparts affecting domestic prices of high quality rice.