Impact of Mandatory Price Reporting Requirements on Level, Variability, and Elasticity Parameter Estimations for Retail Beef Prices

Moving to scanner based and quantity-weighted monthly average retail beef price series has changed the price series significantly. Quantity-weighted price levels are lower and more volatile. Perhaps most important, calculated elasticities for the quantity-weighted averages are lower than for the historical simple average data. Elasticity estimates for simple average monthly price data are also larger than for weekly data, raising the possibility that historic demand analyses have significantly overstated own price demand elasticities. Copyright 2006 American Agricultural Economics Association