Many investment decisions of agribusiness firms such as when to invest in an emerging market or whether to expand the capacity of the firm involve irreversible investment and uncertainty about demand, cost or competition. This paper uses an option-value model to examine the factors affecting an...

When contract production is marketed contemporaneously with production sold through a spot market, it is conveninet to specify the contract price in terms of the subsequent cash price. This paper examines the competitive implications of such pricing arrangements, focusing in particular upon...

The Andean Community's Price Band System (APBS), introduced in 1995, had the announced goal of reducing domestic price instability by buffering fluctuations in international prices through use of a variable import tariff. This paper evaluates the effects of the Andean Price Band System on...

The proposed paper adopts the censored demand system approach of Lee and Pitt (1986) to examine the structure of Mexican food demand. This approach uses the concept of virtual prices to explain specific purchase patterns. The contribution of our selected paper is the incorporation of the...

A relative increase in demand for quality can have one of two potentially countervailing effects: it can cause substitution of one quality for another and/or it might expand overall demand by bringing new consumers into the market. This article investigates demand expansion and substitution...

This paper applies the BLP approach to the demand for ready-to-eat cereals (RTECs) at the supermarket-chain level in Boston using IRI monthly data. The Random Coefficient Model is used to estimate the demand for 37 brands of RTECs at the leading supermarkets in the Boston area. The empirical...

Cointegration of Canadian and U.S. livestock prices points to the existence of market integration in the period 1996:1 to 2004:12 even though the trade flows of livestock and beef products were non-existent for many months in 2003 and 2004 (suggesting market segmentation) due to livestock/beef...

One step-ahead forecasts of quarterly live cattle, live hog, and broiler prices are evaluated under two general approaches: accuracy-based measures and the ability to categorize price movements directionally or within a forecasted range. Results suggest USDA price forecasts are not optimal....

Preconditioning calf programs, while not new, are becoming more prevalent. They provide benefits to cow-calf producers while adding value for feeder cattle buyers. However, questions remain regarding the marginal returns from marketing preconditioned calves exceeds the marginal costs for...

Previous research found that country elevators that are the first in their area to grade wheat and pay quality-adjusted prices would receive above-normal profits at the expense of their competitors. Because of spatial monopsony, these early-adopting elevators would pass on to producers only 70%...