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Abstract
Price transmission studies have become increasingly important in Sub Sahara Africa
over the last two decades because of their application in assessing the impact of the
market reforms policies embarked upon by the region’s governments between the mid
1980s and early 1990s. In this study, a meta database obtained from 45 price
transmission studies published between 1978 and 2011, is used to provide an overall
assessment of the potential impact of selected, study-specific attributes on estimated
price transmission coefficients and in identifying asymmetric price transmission.
Despite the large dispersion of estimated price transmission coefficients 2.5% - 94.2%,
the mean coefficient of 32.2% is an overall assessment that the extent of price
transmission in SSA is comparatively low. The predicted impacts of the study-specific
attributes on the price transmission coefficients, and on the likelihood of the primary
studies to report asymmetric price transmission however differ consistently across the
attributes, and provide in general evidence on the critical role such attributes play in
determining price transmission results and their implications for policy formulation.
Therefore, future research on price transmission should carefully account for the
impact of study-specific attributes in their results.