MEAT MEETS META:A QUANTITATIVE REVIEW OF THE PRICE ELASTICITY OF MEAT

The price elasticity of meat has been estimated in numerous studies that utilize a variety of disparate modeling procedures. In light of differences in the literature, a meta-analysis is performed to assess the sensitivity of the meat price elasticity to a number of characteristics, including the type of meat, specification of demand, nature of data, estimation method, characteristics of the publication outlet, and location of demand. The results from estimating linear and Box-Cox meta-regressions, coupled with different panel data treatments, reveal that these characteristics have differing influence on the reported price elasticity. Key words: meat demand, meta-analysis, price elasticity. JEL codes: D12, Q11. Few parameters have received as much attention among agricultural economists as the price elasticity of meat demand. Indeed, with hundreds of studies from which to choose, it is easy to find a multitude of elasticity estimates for many types of meat. However, whatever the intended purpose, whether to gauge com-petitive pressure in the market or to predict the impact onmeat consumption of exogenous factors, since studies differ across many dimen-sions, such as demand specification, nature of data,and estimation technique, it is challenging to select from the numerous elasticity esti-mates. For example, in light of the increasing attention given to utilizing food price policies to improve health (e.g.,Marshall 2000;Kuchler, Tegene,andHarris 2005;Chouinard et al. 2007), consider a policymaker wishing to explore the impact of a tax on red meat. Since the lit-erature reports price elasticities for red meat ranging from inelastic to elastic, the decrease in consumption might be small or large, depend-ing on the chosen price elasticity. Furthermore, if the policymaker wishes to compare price responsiveness acrossmeats, the variety of esti-mates in the literaturemakes this difficult.With respect to beef and pork, for example, sinc