Price Dynamics in a Vertical Sector: The Case of Butter by

We develop a reduced-form model of price transmission in a vertical sector, allowing for refined asymmetric, contemporaneous and lagged, own and cross price effects under time-varying volatility. The model is used to investigate wholesale-retail price dynamics in the US butter market. The analysis documents the nature of nonlinear price dynamics in a vertical sector, with implications for price transmission and the distribution of future prices. It finds strong evidence of asymmetric retail price responses, both in the short term and the longer term, but only weak evidence of asymmetric wholesale price responses. Asymmetric retail responses play a major role in generating a skewed distribution for butter price.