Integration of Wheat Markets in Maharashtra

This paper has examined the market integration of wheat in Maharashtra. Both market arrivals and prices of wheat have depicted increasing trends in almost all the selected markets of Maharashtra. The seasonality in arrivals of wheat has been found higher than the seasonality in market prices, indicating a rise in market instability. Out of the seven, four markets have been found spatially integrated. Some market pairs have shown bidirectional causality, while others have depicted unidirectional causality. Almost all the selected wheat markets have shown long-run equilibrium relationship and existence of co-integration among them. The strengthening of physical infrastructure, use of information and communication technology and well-defined transparent agricultural policy/market measures in the state will help in the development of single uniform economic market in the region, in particular and country in general.