The Behaviour of Relative Food Prices: An Analysis Across the European Countries

We analyze the behaviour of relative food prices for a set of 24 European countries observed during the period 1996.1 - 2007.12. We use recent methods for the analysis of nonstationary panels to show that food prices dynamics can be decomposed into a common component and an idiosyncratic component. From this decomposition we compute and analyze the real exchange rates for a set of food products. We find that countries included in the euro-area are more market integrated, i.e. real exchange rates tend to converge, than countries that did not adopt euro.