A Random Coefficient Meat Demand Model

The stability of the US consumer demand for meat has been a popular topic for journal articles I show that econometric models imply that demand is fundamentally unstable. A good way to build taste instability into econometric demand equations is to specify them as random coefficient models. I estimate a random coefficient model of meat demand and find significant evidence that taste instability has caused fluctuations in the elasticities of demand for beef, pork, chicken, and turkey.