These essays cover the economics of shrink in cattle and explore price relationships of the wholesale meat market for beef, pork, lamb, and poultry. The first essay utilizes a mixed effects model to analyze factors that affect shrink on cattle in the Southern Region of the United States. The second essay identifies structural breaks in the wholesale meat market and utilizes Vector Autoregression Models to analyze changing price relationships in graded beef, pork, poultry and, lamb. The third essay employs Structural Vector Autoregression Models to analyze the wholesale pork industry, in particular belly price relationships compared to other cuts of pork.
