CONTENTS

Advertising's Relative Impact on Milk Consumption

Have Expenditures to Advertise California Amonds been Effective?

Editor's Notes

Director’s Corner

Next Meeting

NEC-63 2002 Next Meeting Date xx-yy, 2002 Albuquerque, New Mexico Allocation Issues in Check-off Programs

Director's Corner

by Harry M. Kaiser

I am delighted to report that NICPRE has been chosen to do the annual economic evaluation of the national dairy farmer and fluid milk processor checkoff programs. These two checkoff programs are the largest programs in the U.S., and by law, are required to have annual evaluations in terms of their economic impacts. However, until recently, the annual evaluations were always conducted by economists in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. A couple of years ago, the USDA adopted an economic model developed and maintained by NICPRE, and last year NICPRE subcontracted with the USDA to do the analysis. This year, we will dramatically overhaul the model by replacing much of the aggregate market data with A.C. Nielsen household data to improve our economic estimates of program impacts on the demand side. To help us conduct the necessary research for this project, we have hired Todd Schmit, who is taking a leave from the Ph.D. program at Cornell University. Some of you will remember Todd from his excellent work with NICPRE on our economic evaluation of the American Egg Board and the California Egg Board two years ago. Another new member of the team is Dr. Brian Gould from the University of Wisconsin, who is an expert in demand systems and in micro-household data. We look forward to working with the USDA on this important project over the next several years.