Atle Oglend

The Behaviour of Salmon Price Volatility

Salmon prices exhibit substantial volatility. An understanding of the structure of volatility is of great interest since this is a major contributor to economic risk in the salmon industry. The volatility process in salmon prices was analysed based on weekly price data from 1995 to 2007. The Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (GARCH) model was used to test for volatility clustering and persistence of volatility for prices. We find evidence for and discuss the degree of persistence and reversion in salmon price volatility. Further, we find increased volatility in periods of high prices. For the industry this means that larger expected profits more often than not come at a tradeoff of greater price risk.

Gas versus oil prices the impact of shale gas

What significance will developments in shale gas production have for European gas prices? Some commentators paint a gloomy picture of the future gas markets. But most forecasts for the oil market are positive. Consequently, a view appears to prevail that price trends will differ sharply between oil and gas markets. This article looks at developments in US shale gas production and discusses their impact on the movement of European gas prices. The relationship between oil and gas prices over time is also analysed.

Fish Price Volatility

ABSTRACT This article investigates the volatility of fish prices on a global scale using trade data. The trade data is organized along four dimensions: Geographical market (import), production technology, species, and product form. This allows us to address several interesting questions such as volatility of prices of aquaculture products relative to capture fisheries, or how does volatility vary across species or product forms. In addition we compare the volatility of fish prices to other commodities to investigate their volatility in a broader context. Given the importance of trade in fisheries and aquaculture, our analysis also sheds light on the relative importance of price risk as part of trade revenue risk and the riskiness of various fish enterprises at the market level. JEL Codes: F1O, Q02, Q11.

SPATIAL DIVERSIFICATION IN NORWEGIAN AQUACULTURE

Salmon farming companies face risks in both production and their markets. These risks provide incentives to diversify production spatially. A spatial diversification strategy can reduce production risk and contractual obligation risks. In this paper, we investigate the feasibility and consequences of geographically diversifying production in Norwegian aquaculture. Our analysis suggests that diversification can significantly reduce fluctuations in returns and reduce sensitivity to local risk factors.

The Spot-Forward Relationship in the Atlantic Salmon Market

ABSTRACT This study examines the Fish Pool salmon futures contract with respect to how well the market performs in terms of the futures price being an unbiased estimator of the spot price and whether the market provides a price discovery function. Using data for 2006–2014 and with futures prices with maturities up to 6 months we find that spot and lagged futures prices are cointegrated and that the futures price provides an unbiased estimate of the spot price. We also find that, with the exception of the front month, that the causality is one-directional. The spot prices lead futures prices between 1–6 months maturity. Hence, while the spot and lagged futures prices are unbiased estimates, we do not find support for the hypothesis that futures prices provide a price discovery function. Rather, it seems that innovations in the spot price influence futures prices. This finding is not uncommon in new and immature futures contracts markets. Hence, the salmon futures market is still immature and has not yet reached the stage where futures prices are able to predict future spot prices.

Are Prices or Biology Driving the Short-Term Supply of Farmed Salmon?

Abstract The short-term relationships between the supply of farmed salmon and its market and biological determinants are not fully understood. In this article an econometric model of salmon supply is estimated exploiting monthly data on Norwegian salmon aquaculture. Our estimates indicate that supply has shifted over time due to innovations in several areas. We find that the price of farmed salmon has a limited effect on supplied quantity, giving a highly inelastic short-run supply elasticity. The biomass and seasonal factors are the main determinants of shifts in salmon supply in the short term. JEL Classification Codes: D22, Q11, Q22

BUYING POWER IN UK RETAIL CHAINS: A RESIDUAL SUPPLY APPROACH

The growth of large supermarket chains has raised concerns that these companies can exploit oligopsony power. In this article, we specify a residual supply schedule to investigate the degree of oligopsony power in seafood retailing. Based on the residual supply elasticity, one can also derive a Lerner-type index to measure the degree of market power. Our empirical analysis of the largest supermarket chains in the United Kingdom provide no evidence of oligopsony power for three key seafood products, cod, salmon and shrimp.

Spatial-dynamics of Hypoxia and Fisheries: The Case of Gulf of Mexico Brown Shrimp

ABSTRACT We analyze the Gulf of Mexico brown shrimp fishery and the potential impacts of a large seasonal area of hypoxia (low dissolved oxygen) that coincides with the peak shrimp season. A spatial-dynamic bioeconomic simulation embeds three biological impacts on shrimp: mortality, growth, and aggregation on hypoxic edges. Hypoxia creates feedbacks in the bioeconomic system, altering catch and effort patterns. System changes propagate over space to affect areas that do not experience hypoxia. Areas that might otherwise be considered controls in a natural experiments framework are contaminated by the ecological disturbance through spatial sorting. Aggregate predictions from simulations are similar to empirical fishery data. Average shrimp size and total landings are negatively correlated, as are hypoxic severity and landings. Shrimp size and hypoxic severity are only weakly negatively correlated. Growth overfishing, which varies with recruitment success and ecological disturbances, is a key mediating effect. JEL Code: Q22

Seafood prices reveal impacts of a major ecological disturbance

Significance Coastal hypoxia is a growing problem worldwide, but economic consequences for fisheries are largely unknown. We provide evidence that hypoxia causes economic effects on a major fishery that was once the most valuable fishery in America. Our analysis is also a breakthrough in causal inference for coupled human-natural systems. Although establishing causality with observational data is always challenging, feedbacks across the human and natural systems amplify these challenges and explain why linking hypoxia to fishery losses has been elusive. We offer an alternative approach using a market counterfactual that is immune to contamination from feedbacks in the coupled system. Natural resource prices can thus be a means to assess the significance of an ecological disturbance. Coastal hypoxia (dissolved oxygen ≤ 2 mg/L) is a growing problem worldwide that threatens marine ecosystem services, but little is known about economic effects on fisheries. Here, we provide evidence that hypoxia causes economic impacts on a major fishery. Ecological studies of hypoxia and marine fauna suggest multiple mechanisms through which hypoxia can skew a population’s size distribution toward smaller individuals. These mechanisms produce sharp predictions about changes in seafood markets. Hypoxia is hypothesized to decrease the quantity of large shrimp relative to small shrimp and increase the price of large shrimp relative to small shrimp. We test these hypotheses using time series of size-based prices. Naive quantity-based models using treatment/control comparisons in hypoxic and nonhypoxic areas produce null results, but we find strong evidence of the hypothesized effects in the relative prices: Hypoxia increases the relative price of large shrimp compared with small shrimp. The effects of fuel prices provide supporting evidence. Empirical models of fishing effort and bioeconomic simulations explain why quantifying effects of hypoxia on fisheries using quantity data has been inconclusive. Specifically, spatial-dynamic feedbacks across the natural system (the fish stock) and human system (the mobile fishing fleet) confound “treated” and “control” areas. Consequently, analyses of price data, which rely on a market counterfactual, are able to reveal effects of the ecological disturbance that are obscured in quantity data. Our results are an important step toward quantifying the economic value of reduced upstream nutrient loading in the Mississippi Basin and are broadly applicable to other coupled human-natural systems.

Modeling UK Natural Gas Prices When Gas Prices Periodically Decouple from the Oil Price

When natural gas prices are subject to periodic decoupling from oil prices, for instance due to peak-load pricing, conventional linear models of price dynamics such as the Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) can lead to erroneous inferences about cointegration relationships, price adjustments and relative values. We propose the use of regime-switching models to address these issues. Our regime switching model uses price data to infer whether pricing is oil-driven (integrated) or gas-specific (decoupled). We find that UK natural gas (ICE) and oil (Brent) are cointegrated for the majority of the sample considered (1997-2014). Gas prices tend to decouple during fall and early winter, when they increase relative to oil consistent with heating demand for natural gas creating gas-specific pricing. Using the model to infer relative values when evidence favors integrated markets, we find that the industry 10-1 rule-of-thumb holds, meaning that the value of one barrel of oil is 10 times the value of one MMbtu of natural gas.