SOUTHERN JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS DECEMBER, 1982 SOME EVIDENCE AND IMPLICATIONS OF STRUCTURAL CHANGE IN RETAIL DEMAND FOR MEATS

Economic theory suggests that demand be- occurred within the period. If the structure has havior is time variant, but does not offer much changed, the estimated equation would be a hy-insight into the nature of the temporal variation. brid, neither applicable to the period before nor For practical purposes, at least two interpreta- after the structural change (Tomek and Robin-tions regarding the time behavior of demand rela- son, p. 305). Still the equation might be incor-tionships may be advanced. Considering be- rectly judged as acceptable according to conven-havior of demand parameters, demand relations tional statistical tests. may be regarded as continuously varying over Therefore, this paper examines the nature of time (Cooley and Prescott), or, alternately, structural change in the U.S. retail demand for changing between successive time intervals meats in the light of the preceding discussion. (Goldfeld and Quandt). Meat production occupies an important role in A problem area to which the former is appli- the U.S. agricultural sector and is linked to the cable is exemplified by recent work of Ward and other agricultural subsectors in a complex way. Tilley; the latter has been discussed by Tomek On the demand side, meat is the single commod-(p. 350) and is reflected in the real world by ity group that accounts for the highest proportio