Elasticidade de transmissão de preços do leite entre os elos de mercado: produtor, atacado e varejo

Abstract

Milk production chains have significant effects on job and income generation. Due to constant changes in costs, revenues and prices, the Brazilian dairy industry experiences small fluctuations in consumer demand. For that, several series of monthly prices of milk and derivatives were used, namely: price of raw milk paid to the producer (R$/liter); wholesale powdered milk price (R$/kg); retail price of powdered milk (R$/kg); wholesale price of UHT milk (R$/liter); retail price of UHT milk (R$/ liter); wholesale butter price (R$/kg); retail price of butter (R$/kg); wholesale price of mozzarella (R$/kg) and retail price of mozzarella (R$/kg). The price of raw milk paid to the producer was provided by the Center for Advanced Studies in Applied Economics at ESALQ/USP (CEPEA). The price series of other products, wholesale and retail, were all made available by the Institute of Agricultural Economics of São Paulo (IEA/SP). Milk prices can be traced down to the wholesale level and down to the retail level thanks to cointegration analysis. An examination of the data collected from this process shows that changes in milk prices, both at the farm and at the retail level, are strongly affected by wholesale prices. This is because wholesale prices provide much more information about other marketers than producer or retail prices.