The Pandemic's Price Tag: Agricultural Inflation and Its Drivers

Since the onset of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, significant disruptions have occurred in global economies. This study focuses on the imbalance between supply and demand within the agricultural sector. The analysis period was chosen to align with the start and end of the vaccination campaign, which began in late 2020 and concluded on August 31, 2021. To analyze the data, an Auto Regressive Distributed Lags (ARDL) model was applied. A pre- and post-analysis was performed to assess key factors, including unit roots, variance inflation, multi-collinearity, heteroscedasticity, cointegration, and structural breaks, which were tested using cumulative sum analysis. The results highlight the relationship between demand-side factors and their influence on the agricultural index. Additionally, the economic stimulus policy showed contrasting behavior when compared to the agricultural index. These insights may provide a foundation for future research and guide policy decisions.