A Study on Price Discovery Function of Japan's Frozen Shrimp Future Market

일본 냉동새우 선물시장의 가격발견기능에 관한 연구

Japan's frozen shrimp future market is the only fisheries future commodity market in the world. This empirical study examines the lead and lag relationship between Japan frozen shrimp spot and future markets using the daily prices from August 1, 2002 to December 31, 2005. Frozen shrimp future contract is listed on Japan Kansai Commodities Exchange. Japan imports approximately 250,000 tons of frozen shrimp annually, of which just under 70,000 tons, nearly 30%, are black tiger shrimp. Approximately 90% of black tiger shrimp are caught in Indonesia, India, Thailand and Vietnam, and the two largest consumers of these shrimp are Japan and the U.S.A. Kansai Commodities Exchange adopts the India black tiger shrimp as standard future commodity. We use unit root test, Johansen cointegration test, Granger causality test, Vector autoregressive analysis and Impulse response analysis. However, considering the long - term relationships between the level variables of frozen shrimp spot and futures, we introduced Vector Error Correction Model. We find that the price change of frozen shrimp futures with next 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 month maturity have a strong predictive power to the change of frozen shrimp spot and the change of frozen shrimp spot also have a predictive power to the change of frozen shrimp with next 1, 2, 3 month maturity. But, the explanatory power of the frozen shrimp futures is relatively greater than that of frozen shrimp spot.