Grader Bias in Cattle Markets? Evidence from Iowa

Brent Hueth (brent.hueth@usda.gov), Philippe Marcoul (marcoul@ualberta.ca) and John D. Lawrence

Staff General Research Papers Archive from Iowa State University, Department of Economics

Abstract: Participants in U.S. markets for live cattle increasingly rely on federal grading standards to price slaughtered animals. This change is due to the growing prominence of ﾓgridﾔ pricing mechanisms that specify explicit premiums and discounts contingent on an animal's graded quality class. Although there have been recent changes in the way cattle are priced, the technology for sorting animals into quality classes has changed very little: human graders visually inspect each slaughtered carcass and call a ﾓqualityﾔ and ﾓyieldﾔgrade in a matter of seconds as the carcass passes on a moving trolley. There is anecdotal evidence of systematic bias in these called grades across time and regions within U.S. markets, and this paper empirically examines whether such claim is supported in a sample of loads delivered to three different Iowa packing plants during the years 2000-02. Keywords: cattle markets, grader bias, quality measurement.

Date: 2007-11-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr
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Published in American Journal of Agricultural Economics, November 2007, vol. 89 no. 4, pp. 890-903

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Related works:
Journal Article: Grader Bias in Cattle Markets? Evidence from Iowa (2007)
Working Paper: Grader Bias in Cattle Markets? Evidence from Iowa (2007)
Working Paper: GRADER BIAS IN CATTLE MARKETS? EVIDENCE FROM IOWA (2006)
Working Paper: Grader Bias in Cattle Markets? Evidence from Iowa (2004)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:isu:genres:11465

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