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Abstract
This paper investigates spatial, quality, and temporal factors impacting prices of calves and
yearlings in the western United States using satellite video auction data and a hedonic regression
framework. Prices received by western ranchers are discounted by approximately the costs of
shipping cattle to the Midwest for processing. Other key results include identifying the presence
of temporal price premiums for seller-offered forward contracts, providing new estimates of the
marginal value associated with key quality attributes and management practices and finding
support for the price benefits of third-party quality certification. We also link variability in
estimated valuations for value-added attributes to the stage of the cattle cycle.