Demand and Price Analysis: Some Examples from Agriculture

Demand And Price Analysis: Some Examples From Agriculture by Frederick Vail Waugh. This study, prepared for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service and published as Technical Bulletin No. 1316, surveys methods for analyzing how prices and demand for farm products are determined and forecast. The work traces the development of demand analysis from Cournot, Walras, Marshall, and Moore to modern econometrics, highlighting the need to combine theory with statistics. It presents graphical methods and time-series analyses of total food consumption, price-deflation techniques, and the relation between retail prices, farm prices, and consumer income. Chapters illustrate how demand shifts occur for meat and other foods, and how price spreads between farm and retail influence farm revenue. It also covers intermarket competition, the concept of a demand matrix, and the distribution of output among markets, including two- and multi-market examples (wheat and lemons). The volume emphasizes conditional forecasts, long-run demand, and the integration of theory and empirical measurement for agricultural policy and planning.