Exploring Price Patterns of Vegetables with Recurrence Quantification Analysis

This study investigates the time-series behavior of vegetable prices in the Central Market of Thessaloniki, Greece, using Recurrence Plot (RP) analysis and Recurrence Quantification Analysis (RQA), which considers non-linearities and does not necessitate stationarity of time series. The period of study was 1999–2016 for practical and research reasons. In the present work, we focus on vegetables available throughout the year, exploring the dynamics and interrelationships between their prices to avoid missing data. The study applies RP visual inspection classification, a clustering based on RQA parameters, and a classification based on the RQA analysis graphs with epochs for the first time. The aim of the paper was to investigate the grouping of products based on their price dynamical behavior. The results show that the formed groups present similarities related to their use as dishes and their way of cultivation, which apparently affect the price dynamics. The results offer insights into market behaviors, helping to inform better management strategies and policymaking and offer a possibility to predict variability of prices. This information can interest government policies in various directions, such as what products to develop for greater stability, identity for fluctuating prices, etc. In future work, a larger dataset including missing data could be included, as well as a machine-learning algorithm to classify the products based on the RQA with epochs graphs.