Trades like chicken? Three representations of chicken trade for policy and market analysis.

摘要

Quantitative policy analysis can be based on any of several representations of market structure. We add to the literature by representing chicken trade in three ways: one homogeneous good, two homogeneous co-products, and heterogeneous goods differentiated by country of origin. Each representation is characterized by trade equations, and certain data and elasticities. Key supplies and demands are changed as little as possible among representations for consistency, so differences in results only come from the fundamentally different assumptions about what 'chicken' is. We simulate the effects of liberalization of US and Mexican chicken imports, US export support, and external shocks to supply and demand. We find that chicken trade policy analysis results in particular depend on market structure, but effects of shocks to underlying supply and demand are less sensitive to the structure.