Determination of the Best Marketing Time for Cotton by Game Theory

Cotton is an important agricultural product in providing the raw material for the textile industry. Cotton production and prices show big variances over the years. In general, cotton is marketed after the harvest. This results in seasonal decrease in cotton prices. The purpose of this study is to determine selling time of cotton using game theory in Aydin province. Therefore, the material of the work consists of the data collected from 93 enterprises, selected with stratified random sampling method from villages that has intensively produced cotton production in the region. The monthly cotton prices for 10 years within 1998-2007 were obtained from Izmir Commodity Exchange. Two separate game theory models, namely real and current, were formed using primary data and world cotton price series. In the first model, the calculation was performed by disregarding the bank interest rate. In the second model, relative opportunity cost was used. The results showed that when selling is realized according to the first model, the producers gain price advantage by 7.64 and 0.60 % in the second model.