| dc.description.abstract | This dissertation is concerned with (i) how to model an agricultural market, (ii) how to
analyze the impacts of a certain event (i.e. animal disease outbreak) on the market, and
(iii) what are the relationships between different markets. The research on the first two
issues will focus on the US beef market, and the impact of the bovine spongiform encephalopathy
(BSE) outbreak (Dec. 2003) on the US beef market will be analyzed. For the
third issue, a multinational meat market will be considered, which includes three countries
(Korea, US, and UK) and three meat products (beef, pork, and poultry). Their market
movements will be compared, considering the impacts of the major animal disease
outbreaks: BSE, foot and mouth disease (FMD), and avian influenza (AI).
Based on the properties of an agricultural product (longer cycle of production and
perishability) and the extensive empirical results, it is concluded that a recursive model
is appropriate for modeling an agricultural market. A variety of structural change tests
are applied to reveal that the change due to the BSE event still lies in an allowable range
of the prediction error. For the comparisons between market movements, some multivariate
statistical methods such as canonical correlation analysis (CCA) and principal
component analysis (PCA) are used, and the main finding is that the knowledge about
the threat of BSE to human health played an important role in changing people's attitude
towards an animal disease event. | en |
