In the late 80's and early 90's Mexico eliminated minimum price policies of main agricultural commodities and substituted those policies by government operated contract markets. Contracts can help smooth price variations and facilitate risk-sharing but their impact on price levels is uncertain....

We document the existence of asymmetric price transmission in Mexico for a wide variety of food and non-food products, in terms of magnitude and speed, for two segments of the supply chain: i) Producer (producer-wholesale) and ii) Consumer (wholesale-retail). We find that asymmetric price...