POLICY CHANGE AND THE DAIRY COOPERATIVES SECTOR, 1980-1988: AN EXAMINATION OF OPERATIONAL PERFORMANCE

This paper employs the dual approach to trace the impact of public policy instruments upon the operational and financial performance of U.S. dairy cooperatives. A restricted profit function is applied to the Operations and Finance Statements for years 1980-1988 of thirty major dairy cooperatives. The data set for this study is provided by the Agricultural Cooperatives Service, USDA. A specification search such as described in Mountain and Hsaio (1989) is conducted to ensure the most appropriate fit for the data provided.From the estimated parameters, output supply and factor demand elasticities will be obtained by way of well-known functional relationships. From these elasticities, the short-run effect of any change in Federal Marketing Order prices upon cooperative revenues may be calculated in a straightforward manner. By retracing the price effects of Federal Order policy changes in a stepwise manner, the impact on cooperative operations and revenues of these changes is approximated.