IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ias/cpaper/04-wp355.html

Grader Bias in Cattle Markets? Evidence from Iowa

Author

Listed:
  • Brent Hueth
  • John D. Lawrence
  • Philippe Marcoul

Abstract

Participants in U.S. markets for live cattle increasingly rely on federal grading standards to price slaughtered animals. This change is due to the growing prominence of "grid" pricing mechanisms that specify explicit premiums and discounts contingent on an animal's graded quality class. Although there have been recent changes in the way cattle are priced, the technology for sorting animals into quality classes has changed very little: human graders visually inspect each slaughtered carcass and call a "quality" and "yield" grade in a matter of seconds as the carcass passes on a moving trolley. There is anecdotal evidence of systematic bias in these called grades across time and regions within U.S. markets, and this paper empirically examines whether such claim is supported in a sample of loads delivered to three different Iowa packing plants during the years 2000-02.

Suggested Citation

  • Brent Hueth & John D. Lawrence & Philippe Marcoul, 2004. "Grader Bias in Cattle Markets? Evidence from Iowa," Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) Publications 04-wp355, Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) at Iowa State University.
    • Handle: RePEc:ias:cpaper:04-wp355
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.card.iastate.edu/products/publications/pdf/04wp355.pdf
    File Function: Full Text
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.card.iastate.edu/products/publications/synopsis/?p=513
    File Function: Online Synopsis
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Jang, Ju Won & Ishdorj, Ariun & Anderson, David P., 2015. "Searching for the Possible Sources of Grader Bias in Beef Grading: A Non-parametric Approach," 2015 AAEA & WAEA Joint Annual Meeting, July 26-28, San Francisco, California 205734, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    3. Ferrier, Peyton & Liu, Qihong, 2010. "Consumer sorting of vertically differentiated goods," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 109(1), pages 11-13, October.
    4. Scott W. Fausti & Zhiguang Wang & Bashir A. Qasmi & Matthew A. Diersen, 2014. "Risk and marketing behavior: pricing fed cattle on a grid," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 45(5), pages 601-612, September.
    5. Jang, Ju Won & Ishdorj, Ariun & Anderson, David P. & Purevjav, Tsengeg & Dahlke, Garland, 2017. "Exploring The Existence Of Grader Bias In Beef Grading," Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 49(3), pages 467-489, August.
    6. Ibarburu, Maro A. & Lawrence, John D. & Busby, Darrell, 2007. "Economics of Increased Beef Grader Accuracy," 2007 Conference, April 16-17, 2007, Chicago, Illinois 37558, NCCC-134 Conference on Applied Commodity Price Analysis, Forecasting, and Market Risk Management.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ias:cpaper:04-wp355. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/caiasus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.