AN ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF SUBSTITUTES WITH SOME ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES AND IMPLICATIONS FOR THE BEEF INDUSTRY

There are three main parts to this paper. The first concerns the adaptation of conventional demand and supply theory to explain why and when the development of substitutes occurs. The second part is a discussion of four examples of substitutes that appear to have completed their developmental process. This is to see how the theory fares in practice. In the third part, implications of the theory are drawn for the beef industry which recently had its first serious encounter with substitutes.