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Abstract
Agricultural production is spread all over Turkey and the considerably different
climatic and topographical conditions among the provinces lead to highly diversified agricultural production. Thus, is it reasonable to assume an integrated market
all over Turkey? This paper analyzes the spatial price transmission among 28
Turkish provinces. Applying a bivariate threshold vector error correction model
allows to account for transaction costs without having direct information of these.
The results suggest that there is an inner cluster of several provinces that can be
treated as one large integrated market. However, the degree of market integration
decreases in the outer provinces of Turkey. Although transaction costs are significant
for nearly all provinces, Ankara clearly stands out, showing transaction
costs with every other province. The observed economic variables fail to explain
this behavior. Hence, social networks as relevant factor for the interactions on
the Turkish wheat market come into play. A band of non-adjustment is only established
for a minority of those pairs that show a threshold. Thus, one has to
critically assess the applicability of such a threshold model to analyze the market
behavior of spatial price transmission.