Author
Coffey, Brian K.
Economic research has not assessed the relationship between physical exercise and protein consumption, which is frequently discussed across media platforms. This study uses news articles related to physical exercise to construct fitness-related media indices. Incorporating these indices and national prices and disappearance for meat from 1993 to 2022, a Rotterdam demand model was used to estimate news media elasticities. We find little evidence that news media attention to physical exercise has direct or spillover effects on beef, pork, or chicken consumption. Further, news media information does not shift demand for food into or out of the aggregate meat complex.
Basis prediction errors for live cattle in the five major Mandatory Livestock Price Reporting areas are analyzed to determine how shifts in the live cattle market fundamentals and contemporaneous market conditions, including price momentum, impact ability to hedge. Results reveal that thinness of the negotiated cash market, weight of cattle marketed, and contemporaneous factors statistically impact basis prediction errors. Impacts vary across region. Volatility in cost of gain and delivery costs have greater effects on basis prediction error than do market trends.