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Abstract
Several quantitative methods have been developed to evaluate the Impacts of
technological change on U.S. agriculture. The major weakness of prevailing models is
that they consider the impact of technology on supply alone and are based on partial
equilibrium analysis in one market. The use of partial equilibrium analysis ignores
cross-market effect. For most goods, a supply shift directly affects quantity demanded
by reducing the price of the commodity along a given demand curve. The resulting
change in the equilibrium price may affect demand for substitute and complimentary
goods, which in turn affect demand for the commodity being considered.
The primary objective of this paper is to analyze price effects and substitution
effects of technological change in interrelated markets. An econometric model was
developed and applied to the beef and pork industries to measure the social impacts of
technological change. The multimarket supply-demand model developed in this paper
includes technology variables in the specification of supply functions and the model
explicitly accounts for the fact that technological change in one market influences
demand for related products
This paper evaluates the welfare impact of technological change through the
consumer-producer surplus model that incorporates the interaction of demand
relationships for beef and pork. The results indicate that total returns for technological
change in beef and pork are high. Technological change in beef affects economic
surpluses in the pork market and technological change in pork affects economic
surpluses in the beef market. The actual allocation of expenditures for technological
development over the study period (1960-1988) was 70% for beef and 30% for pork.
However, the optimal allocation would have been a 40-60 split between beef and pork.