Price formulation and the law of one price in internationally linked markets: an examination of the natural gas markets in the USA and Canada

The degree to which the law of one price holds (integration) along with determining each individual markets’ role in price discovery is examined for 11 major natural gas markets, six from the USA and five from Canada. Deregulation, technological advances, and trade agreements have opened the USA’s and Canada’s natural gas market to new and extensive interactions. The 11 natural gas market prices are tied together with ten long-run co-integration relationships with all markets included in the co-integration space, providing evidence the markets are integrated. The degree of integration varies by region. Markets geographically adjacent to each other tend to be more highly integrated than markets separated by distance. Further results indicate that there is no clear price leader among the 11 markets. Including more US and Canadian markets than previous studies, show markets in both eastern and western USA and Canada are important in the price discovery process.