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Abstract

Despite the human nutritional benefits of seafood such as shrimp, per capita consumption has been declining since 2004. A few studies have been conducted, but the literature is still limited. Indeed, studies that have analyzed the market demand for seafood and shrimp in the United States don’t furnish empirical estimates of the consumer behavior of this market. This void in literature is evident, as recent works have either used aggregated data on seafood or disaggregated shrimp data but focusing on shrimp imports. This paper uses the Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS) to estimate the demand for shrimp in Texas, using AC Nielsen Scanner consumption panel data collected from four metropolitan areas: Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and West Texas. The data ranges from 2006 to 2010. The demand for shrimp is estimated in a system of demand equations for ten fish species. The availability of data on these various kinds of fish enables the assumption of separability of seafood from other food products. The results suggest that all the fish species considered are normal goods and that shrimp demand is price sensitive with an uncompensated own price elasticity of -1.53 and an income elasticity of 0.98. This is partly attributed to the fact that consumers view other fish types as substitutes for shrimp.

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