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General Objectives: <ol> <li>To contribute to the theoretical and empirical literature related to demand, supply, and welfare measures of commodity markets and product quality. <li>Provide policy makers and industry with qualitative and quantitative analysis of food safety and invasive species impacts on commodity markets (domestic and international).
<li>To contibute to the econometric literature in estimating market and nonmakret models.</ol>
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Specific Objectives in Progress: <ol> <li>Investigate the impact of food safety information on price formation of meat products in the US.
<li>Determine the impact of livestock movements in an invasive species framework on risk assessment of disease spread across states in the US.</ol>
The imporatnce of recent outbreaks (e.g. BSE) has demonstrated that we have limited understanding of potential economic impacts of food safety and invasive species incidents on domestic markets and international markets. The intent of this project is to examine the impacts of such outbreaks on domestic and international commodity markets.
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The approach is to extend current economic and econometric models to appropriately incorporate and measure the impacts of food safety outbreaks or invasive species on domestic and international commodity markets. For examples, Piggott and Marsh (2004), developed economic and empirical tools to evaluate the effect of food safety information on a consumer demand system for meat products in the US. Alternatively, the appropriate means to measure the impact of food safety information on price formation remains a topic of future research.