As policy makers strive to maintain competitiveness in agricultural markets, the impacts of altering market information sets must be evaluated. An experiment was designed to assess the price and production impacts of forward contract information. Results suggest that this information reduced...

This research examines the returns to a cattle feeding operation that sorts animals prior to marketing using ultrasound technology. The returns to sorting are between $11 and $25 per head depending on the number of groups the pens in which cattle can be sorted. Sorting faces declining returns....

It has been argued that access to captive supply cattle improve the economic efficiency of beefpacking facilities. However, this argument has not been subject to hypothesis testing. This workmodels the cost efficiencies associated with captive supplies or cattle we refer to as beingsourced...

Information on typical differences in prices and price risk (as measured by the variances ofprices) across marketing arrangements aids fed cattle producers in making choices aboutmethods to use for selling fed cattle to beef packers. This information is also useful for policydiscussions on...

Replaced with revised version of paper 08/24/09.

The efficiency of livestock futures markets continues to receive attention, particularly with regard to their forward pricing or forecasting ability. The purpose of this paper is to present a more general theory that encompasses the forward pricing concept. It is argued that futures contract...