The Dynamic Impacts of Weather Changes on Vegetable Price Fluctuations in Shandong Province, China: An Analysis Based on VAR and TVP-VAR Models

Abstract

In order to enrich the research on the influence of weather factors on agricultural economy and provide practical decision-making references for the relevant market entities, this study took pointed pepper, loofah, Chinese chives and tomato as examples, using weekly wholesale prices and corresponding weather factors data from one of the main production areas in China based on the vector autoregressive (VAR) and the time-varying parameter vector autoregressive (TVP-VAR) models to explore the dynamic impacts of weather changes on vegetable price fluctuations. It was found that price fluctuations of specific vegetable varieties were affected by changes in specific weather factors. The shock intensity of weather factor changes in the same lag period on the current vegetable price fluctuations was time-varying, which could describe the historical dynamics of the impacts of weather changes on vegetable price fluctuations. The dissipation characteristics of the dynamic impacts of weather factors changes occurring at selected time points on vegetable price fluctuations had strong consistency, and the obtained rules could be used to analyze the life cycle and dynamic characteristics of extreme weather impacts on vegetable price fluctuations. In addition, vegetable price fluctuations were affected mostly by their own lag periods, and the shock intensity of vegetable price fluctuations with equal lag periods on their own current price fluctuations were relatively stable. The dynamic impacts of vegetable price fluctuations occurring at chosen time points on its own later fluctuations were highly consistent in the variation from the beginning of the strongest positive shock to the final dissipation.