RESERVATION PRICE ANNOUNCEMENT IN SEALED BID AUCTIONS: COMMENT

This comment corrects some errors of analysis contained in a 1993 paper by Carey in the Journal of Industrial Economics.auction, reservation price

Captive Supplies and Cash Market Prices for Fed Cattle: A Dynamic Rational Expectations Model of Delivery Timing

Several empirical analyses of data from fed cattle markets have found a negative correlation between a region's weekly delivery volume of captive supply cattle and contemporaneous price in the local cash market. This negative correlation has been cited as evidence of a causal relationship between the two variables; a relationship in which buyers (beef packing plants) use captive supply procurement as an instrument to depress prices paid to cash market sellers (feeders). This paper investigates circumstances under which this empirical regularity might emerge as a benign artifact of buyer and seller behavior in a fed cattle market in which both sides are price takers. One feature of these markets is that sellers of both marketing agreement (the predominant captive supply procurement method) cattle and spot market cattle have some flexibility in scheduling delivery in order to take advantage of expected price changes. The effect that this type of inter-temporal arbitrage has on the dynamics of price and captive supply is investigated using simulation methods applied to a rational expectations model of delivery timing incentives.cattle markets; captive supplies; extended path algorithm

Captive supplies and cash market prices for fed cattle: a dynamic rational expectations model of delivery timing

Several empirical analyses of data from fed cattle markets have found a negative correlation between a region\u27s weekly delivery volume of captive supply cattle and contemporaneous price in the local cash market. This negative correlation has been cited as evidence of a causal relationship between the two variables; a relationship in which buyers (beef packing plants) use captive supply procurement as an instrument to depress prices paid to cash market sellers (feeders). This paper investigates circumstances under which this empirical regularity might emerge as a benign artifact of buyer and seller behavior in a fed cattle market in which both sides are price takers. One feature of these markets is that sellers of both marketing agreement (the predominant captive supply procurement method) cattle and spot market cattle have some flexibility in scheduling delivery in order to take advantage of expected price changes. The effect that this type of inter-temporal arbitrage has on the dynamics of price and captive supply is investigated using simulation methods applied to a rational expectations model of delivery timing incentives

A Note on the Inefficiency of Competitive Markets For Quality Goods

This note describes and investigates an equilibrium model of a service market in which customers search among many firms for ones offering acceptable combinations of money price and expected waiting time. Although neither firms nor customers possess market power, the noncooperative equilibrium of the model is inefficient: Forcing customers to be more selective in their choices of suppliers can produce Pareto improvements in welfare. This result is due to an externality, in queue accession decisions, which others have identified in related contexts.

AGRICULTURAL PRICE SPREADS AND MARKET PERFORMANCE

Demand and Price Analysis, Marketing,

Captive Supplies and Cash Market Prices for Fed Cattle: The Role of Delivery Timing Incentives

The use of non-cash methods of procuring fed cattle for slaughter has led to concern about the effect of these so-called “captive” supplies on cash market prices. Some empirical evidence suggests that there is a negative short-run relationship between the two: Cash market prices tend to be low in weeks in which captive supply shipments are high. We advance a different perspective on the relationship between captive deliveries and cash prices, arguing that the incentives that influence cattle delivery-scheduling decisions could lead to a negative relationship, not between the contemporaneous levels of captive shipments and price, but between the volume of captive deliveries, on the one hand, and an ex ante expectation of a week-to-week price change, on the other. Econometric testing provides some evidence of this empirical regularity in the cattle procurement activities of four large packing plants in Texas in the mid-1990s