Author
Peterson, Hikaru Hanawa
Analysis of survey data indicates that Japanese consumers discount their willingness to pay for U.S. beef and pork relative to that of domestic products, but that the discounts have declined from 2006 to 2009. The discounts for U.S. products were greater than those imported from other countries in 2006, but the 2009 discounts were statistically indistinguishable across origins. Our findings also suggest than Japan is a receptive market for meat produced with GM-free feed and for meat products meeting full organic standards.
To reconcile the discrepancy between the efficient market hypothesis and grain marketing recommendations by advisory services and extension programs, simulated prices from an efficient market are used to compare performance of marketing practices over the long run and in individual 40-year periods. We find that an efficient market can generate diverse price behavior within finite samples, allowing for strategies that are inferior on average to perform relatively better, as frequently as half of the time in an average 40-year lifetime. Lifetime returns of strategies show considerable overlap, suggesting extremely low confidence in recommendations made based on short samples.
As increasingly more transactions occur away from open markets, the so-called “thin” market issues arise. This paper analyzes unpublished transaction data from Egg Clearinghouse, Inc. (ECI), a marginal marketplace for eggs that trades 4% of all eggs (80% of eggs available for open trading). Results suggest that marginalized markets can serve as an inventory adjustment mechanism while maintaining the role of price discovery as a check for non-market prices. At ECI, most firms both buy and sell regardless of operational types, participation is balanced across all types of firms in the industry, and sellers in general yield to buyers’ preferred terms of trade.