Concerns about the negative effects of U.S. meat and livestock imports on domestic livestock prices have increased interest in country-of origin labeling (COOL) legislation. An equilibrium displacement model is used to estimate short-run and long-run changes in equilibrium prices and quantities...

The value, relevance, and efficacy of conducting and publishing research has been widely debated throughout the agricultural economics profession. On the one hand, some argue that the research process creates little value and directly competes with teaching/outreach output. On the other hand,...

Conventional wisdom appears to support the thesis that declines in USDA’s farmer’s share-of-the-retail-dollar (FS) statistics are indicators of low returns to agricultural production. We estimate changes in cattle and hog FS statistics and their relationship with producer surplus...

A lack of high-quality beef has been cited as one of the primary factors for the 50% decline in beef demand from the mid-1970s to the last 1990s. Cattle producers argue that appropriate price premiums are not sufficient to encourage the production of high-quality cattle. Although some...

Low-fat ground beef (LFGB) is a new product designed to be as palatable as beef products that contain significantly higher levels of fat. A hedonic model shows that each unitary increase in the leanness of ground beef products carries a price premium of $.0206/lb. If LFGB garners a 10% share of...

An econometric model is used to estimate real wholesale-retail marketing margins for beef and pork. From 1970 to 1998, these margins increased by 27% and 149%, while farm-wholesale margins declined. Wholesale-retail (WR) marketing margin increases have caused livestock producers to focus on the...

The GATT/Uruguay Round trade negotiations have resulted in a multilateral relaxation of beef trade restrictions. A linear elasticity model of the U.S. beef industry is developed using log differentials equations. Beef consumption, production, and trade are disaggregated into appropriate ground...

Real livestock prices and farm-wholesale marketing margins have steadily declined over the past 20 years. Studies examining the causes of these declines have generally failed to account directly for technological change in livestock production and red meat slaughtering. We estimate reduced-form...