The US livestock industry: an evaluation of the adequacy and relevance of three models of consumer and producer behavior

Three annual models of the livestock-meat sector of the economy are estimated and simulated over the period 1951-1980 to evaluate their simulation performance and enable conclusions to be drawn about their possible use to jointly simulate the industry;The demand model is based on neoclassical utility theory and incorporates the postulates of utility theory as basic assumptions in a first difference model. The model has become known recently as the Rotterdam Model;A supply model similar to the Rotterdam demand model is used to simulate the supply of meats and demand for feed. This model, while tracking well in simulation, produced parameter estimates which appear implausible;An inventory supply model is developed to estimate inventory levels as of December 31 for subcategories of the cattle industry and to use these subcategories and a simple price expectations model to estimate and simulate the supply of all meats;Results of this study indicate the models perform well and suggestions are made as to how the models may be improved and combined to estimate and simulate the supply and demand of meats as well as the demand for feed simultaneously.