GLOBALIZATION OF SEAFOOD MARKETS – ANALYZING MARKET INTEGRATION BY DEVIATIONS FROM COMMON PRICES

Ursula Landazuri*1, Frank Asche2, Sigbjorn Tveteraas1
1 University of Stavanger 2 University of Florida
 

Aquaculture has boosted global trade and led to increasing commodification of many seafood products. Along with other developments such as lower transportation cost, improved freezing technology and growth of supermarkets this has induced stronger competition among seafood producers globally (Anderson, Asche and Tveteras, 2010). This is documented in a growing body of studies that estimates competition among wild-caught and farmed seafood products, and for different kinds of fish species. Tveteras et al. 2012 discuss markets interactions between fisheries and aquaculture on a more aggregate level using the FAO Fish Price Index.

We have access to over 100 price series from white fish, salmon, shrimp, tuna and pelagic species based on seafood imports to EU, Japan and USA. To tests market integration and delineation among species and products for such a large number of price series we create a common price for each main species groups. We then investigate the degree of integration by how analyzing the deviations of the individual price series from the the common prices. The results indicate increasing market integration over the data period spanning from 1990 to 2017.