ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the dynamics of food price relationships between several regions in the European part of Russia, to determine whether the first sequence of reforms has led to better functioning and/or integrated regional food markets. Also the speed of price adjustment processes between spatial markets has not increased, compared to the results for the whole sample, and spatial price differences are rather important for most of the products. Hence it is expected that the market integration for the products under regional price control will be weaker than for other products. With respect to market integration, accelerating inflation in the first period of the Russian transition process was very likely to have been one of the central factors influencing spatial market integration (SMI). Furthermore, the measurement of SMI is mainly based on linear or log-linear relationships between prices, which implies that absolute or relative price changes should be related across markets.
