Recently, the meat supply chain has undergone a number of structural changes including
increased concentration and a greater degree of quasi-vertical integration coordinated
through contract procurement. The effects these changes have had on the meat supply
chain, arranged as a complex array of producers, processors, distributors, and retailers,
are not yet known. This study investigates the motives for, and consequences of, recent
changes in the meat supply chain.
The first essay examines causality among variables in the U.S. cattle supply
chain using temporal and contemporaneous causality methodologies. Tests for structural
changes reveal a likely structural change between later 1996 and early 1997 that was
likely induced by the turnaround of the U.S. cattle inventory accompanied with severe
droughts in Midwest. Results suggest that overall temporal causalities in the U.S. cattle
supply chain become weaker after the structural change, though relatively strong
causalities are found in pre-break periods. In contrast, strong contemporaneous causal
relationships are founded in post-break periods. One conclusion is that recent structural
changes in the industry are resulting in more rapid transmission of information through
the supply chain. Causal evidence also suggests that the direction of information transmission has changed in recent times from moving generally downstream to moving
generally upstream. This might be the result of increased concentration at the packer and
retail levels giving rise to increased ability to “set” prices.
The second essay develops a theoretical model to investigate the dynamic effects
of the contract procurement on packer competition in the spot market with general
contract pricing scheme. Results indicate that packers have an incentive to consider the
effects of spot market purchases on contract procurement even after accounting for
hedonic characteristics of live cattle and risk aversion in cattle feeding operations.
The third essay investigates the impacts of domestic and overseas animal disease
outbreaks on the Korean meat supply chain. Market impacts are investigated using both
forecasts and historical decomposition of price innovations based on an error correction
model (ECM) of the Korean meat sector. Results indicate that while the affected markets
suffered significantly from the outbreaks, the impacts seem temporary and substitute
meat markets benefited significantly.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2627 |
| Date | 15 May 2009 |
| Creators | Park, Moon-Soo |
| Contributors | Jin, Yanhong H, Love, H Alan. |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Dissertation, text |
| Format | electronic, application/pdf, born digital |
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