DID THE VOLUNTARY PRICE REPORTING SYSTEM FAIL TO PROVIDE PRICE TRANSPARENCY IN THE CASH MARKET FOR DRESSED STEERS: EVIDENCE FROM SOUTH DAKOTA

The information value of the former USDA voluntary price reporting system is investigated for dressed weight slaughter steers. The ability of the former system to promote market transparency and price discovery in the cash market is evaluated with state level mandatory price reporting data collected from September 1999 to April 2001. The empirical framework evaluates the informational value of public price reports according to the criteria established in the market integration literature. The empirical results indicate that in the cash market for dressed weight steers, in South Dakota and Nebraska the former voluntary price reporting system did foster market transparency and aided in the price discovery process.Livestock Production/Industries, Marketing,

NAFTA INTRA INDUSTRY TRADE IN AGRICULTURAL FOOD PRODUCTS

The paper focuses on NAFTA's impact on intra-industry and inter-industry trade in agricultural food products. Bilateral trade among U.S., Canada, and Mexico, as well as their trade with the rest of the world during 1990 and 1995 are investigated. U.S. trade patterns for agricultural food products are slowly changing.International Relations/Trade,

Price Transparency in the Voluntary Price Reporting System for Live Cattle: Theory and Empirical Evidence

Interregional spatial linkages between South Dakota and Nebraska cash markets for slaughter cattle are investigated. Econometric procedures are used to test whether a thinning market effect or strategic price reporting behavior by packers has degraded market transparency under the voluntary price reporting system. Empirical evidence suggests transparency was not degraded.Demand and Price Analysis,

Towards adiabatic waveforms for inspiral into Kerr black holes: II. Dynamical sources and generic orbits

This is the second in a series of papers whose aim is to generate ``adiabatic'' gravitational waveforms from the inspiral of stellar-mass compact objects into massive black holes. In earlier work, we presented an accurate (2+1)D finite-difference time-domain code to solve the Teukolsky equation, which evolves curvature perturbations near rotating (Kerr) black holes. The key new ingredient there was a simple but accurate model of the singular source term based on a discrete representation of the Dirac-delta function and its derivatives. Our earlier work was intended as a proof of concept, using simple circular, equatorial geodesic orbits as a testbed. Such a source is effectively static, in that the smaller body remains at the same coordinate radius and orbital inclination over an orbit. (It of course moves through axial angle, but we separate that degree of freedom from the problem. Our numerical grid has only radial, polar, and time coordinates.) We now extend the time-domain code so that it can accommodate dynamic sources that move on a variety of physically interesting world lines. We validate the code with extensive comparison to frequency-domain waveforms for cases in which the source moves along generic (inclined and eccentric) bound geodesic orbits. We also demonstrate the ability of the time-domain code to accommodate sources moving on interesting non-geodesic worldlines. We do this by computing the waveform produced by a test mass following a ``kludged'' inspiral trajectory, made of bound geodesic segments driven toward merger by an approximate radiation loss formula.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures. Accepted by Phys. Rev.