In a 2003 report, International Evidence on Food Consumption Patterns, ERS economists estimated income and price elasticities of demand for broad consumption categories and food categories across 114 countries using 1996 International Comparison Program (ICP) data. This report updates that...

The method often proposed to meet environmental goals such as water quality improvement is input restriction, such as reduced fertilizer or pesticide use. Computable general equilibrium (CGE) models are potentially valuable tools to analyze the economic impact of such programs. However, to be...

The statistical properties of daily closing futures prices for nine commodities are studied. Two hypotheses are examined: Price changes are normally distributed, and prices follow a random walk process. Normality is tested by estimating kurtosis, the R/S statistic, and characteristic exponents....

A quarterly econometric model of the U.S. dairy sector has been developed for use in short-to medium-term outlook and policy analyses. Simulations of the model indicate that it performs quite well both during the estimation period and during an eight-quarter interval beyond the estimation...

This study develops statistical procedures using actual sample observations for estimating a large-scale demand system for foods. The result is a complete matrix of, all direct, crossprice, and expenditure elasticities for 40 food items and 1 nonfood item. The demand system illustrates the,...

Three quarterly models were used, based on 1965-75 data, to examine the statistical relation~hips between the retail value, the farm value, and the spread of a fixed sample of food products included in the market basket. The first model gives quarterly expected price indices and price...