In the months following the reopening of the Japanese market to imports of U.S. beef on July 26, 2006, Japanese importers were unable to procure adequate supplies. This paper discusses reasons for early supply shortages and some of the policy and trade issues that will affect demand for U.S....

In a static setting, willingness to pay for an environmental improvement is equal to compensating variation. However, in a dynamic setting characterized by uncertainty, irreversibility, and the potential for learning, willingness to pay may also contain an option value. In this paper, we...

Trade in livestock and livestock products between the U.S. and Canada has become controversial in recent years. This paper focuses of some of the factors that have given rise to this change in trade patterns between the two countries. Hayes and Clemens describe meat and live animal trade in both...

Japanese consumers are sophisticated, highly conscious of food quality and safety, and willing to pay for attributes they believe define a high-quality, safe product. A recent series of domestic and international food safety crises have elevated the importance of meat safety among Japanese...

This study advances, and experimentally tests, a new explanation for the disparity between willingness to pay (WTP) and willingness to accept (WTA)—a dynamic neoclassical theory based on the presence of commitment costs. While to date neoclassical models have not explained the observed...

Declining grain prices, cyclical livestock prices, changing consumer preferences, and intense international competition for agricultural commodity markets have created a need for alternative production and marketing strategies. Iowa producers striving to break away from commodity production and...

The authors present a dynamic model of an agent's decision to purchase or sell a good under the following conditions: uncertainty, irreversibility, and learning over time. As the authors show, an agent's willingness-to-pay (WTP) is influenced by both the intrinsic value of the good and the...

Italy's relatively small area, high population density, and high land and labor costs have created the challenges of ensuring profitably for agricultural producers, slowing urban encroachment onto arable land, and keeping farm families on land that has been handed down within the families for...

Worldwide, a segment of consumers can afford to pay substantial price premiums for very high quality agricultural products with attributes those consumers value. At the same time, many U.S. farmers are producing these high-quality products but are not using market mechanisms that allow them to...

It has become obvious to many observers that China will need to import feed grains or livestock products to achieve consumer diets similar to those of the developed world. The first part of this report discusses the supply and demand situation for the Chinese pork market through 2007. The second...