Title: Effect Of Oil Prices On Food prices: Time Series Analysis Using Vector Autoregressive (VAR) Model
Abstract: This study examines the effect of oil prices on food prices using worldwide monthly data covering crude oil prices wheat, soybeans and rice prices from 08.2013 until 06.2017 from World-Bank-Database 2017. It specifically considers the identification of the short-term causal relationship between oil and the selected commodity prices using the Vector-Autoregressive-Model as main model and its post-estimation methods, Granger-Causality-Test and Impulse response function. The results show that there is no long run relationship between the variables but a significant causal short-term relationship between oil prices and wheat prices is confirmed. The impulse response results after a simulated shock on oil prices showed mainly negative response of soybeans prices a and persistent increase on wheat prices, for the rice prices response there was a slight increase on rice prices after the shock of oil prices. This research targets the detection of one influencing factor to food prices in order to support food security. To achieve this objective and recommend solutions research needed to further investigate the interaction of food prices with other variables.