support for this work, provided by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 71003097);Jiangsu Province Social Science Foundation (No. 10EYD025);2008 China University of Mining and Technology Youth Foundation Program (No.2008W04)
Coal is the principal form of energy used in China. Hence, coal price variations are expected to have some influence on merchandise prices. Monthly data from January, 2002, to October, 2010, were used to construct a v...