Assessing the Short-term Effect of Exchange Rate Liberalisation on Food Import Prices: The Regression Discontinuity in Time Employed for Russian Food Markets in 2014

Abstract

This study summarises the main agricultural policies in Russia during 2014 and uses a sharp regression discontinuity design over time and data from the International Trade Centre to estimate the short-term effects of exchange rate liberalisation in November 2014 on import prices in Russian food markets. The sharp regression discontinuity design over time allowed an expost analysis of the short-term causal effects of the intervention on food import prices and distinguishing the effect of exchange rate liberalisation between product groups and from other interventions without using data from control regions, products and suppliers. Significant upward shifts in import prices were found for pig products, fish and cheese.

Mitigating Spatial Disproportions in Agriculture Through Revealing Competitive Advantages

“…Since recently, many of the conventional threats to food security in Russia, such as environmental and economic aspects of agricultural production, have been aggravating under the pressure of economic sanctions on the country (Samygin, Kudryavtsev, 2018). Against the background of new challenges to food security, there are arising problems of dependence on imports across a variety of food sectors, low self-sufficiency of the country on certain agricultural products, increasing costs in agriculture, and deteriorating accessibility of staples due to degrading real incomes spurred by food inflation (Kuznetsov, 2022;Loginova, 2022). Zakshevskii et al (2019), Erokhin et al (2022), and Kumar (2022) recognize the potential of developing existing competitive advantages, as well as revealing the new ones as most promising ways of adaptation to the contemporary challenges to the agricultural sector.…”