In this article, we explore the patterns and determinants of the prices of raw material and intermediate inputs (MIIs) to UK manufacturing as measured by the net (n) and gross (g) producer price indexes of materials and fuels (PIMF). Despite the importance of MII in total manufacturing costs their prices have been little studied. It is shown that these prices are Granger independent of the demand for such inputs and thus a simple cost based model of price determination is constructed. This model forecasts that MII prices are functions of world prices for oil, commodities and semi-manufactured products intermediated by exchange rates and duties, domestic factor prices and a trend reflecting domestic technical change, changes in mark ups and change in weights. By the means of an error correction representation it is found that PIMFn and PIMFg, in the long and short-run, are more sensitive to overseas-determined prices (of oil, commodities and semi-manufactured products) than domestically determined prices (labour, capital and the trend). It may be argued that to some considerable degree therefore the prices of material and intermediate inputs in UK manufacturing will not be particularly sensitive to policy actions.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Publisher Info
Article provided by Taylor and Francis Journals in its journal Applied Economics.