CONTENTS

Decomposing the Extensive and Intesive Effects of Advertising on Fluid Milk and Cheese Demand

Articles and Recent Reports by staff at NICPRE

Director’s Corner

Next Meeting

NEC-63 Spring 2001 March 22-23, 2001 Washington, DC Policy and Distribution Issues in Agricultural Commodity Promotion Programs

Director's Corner

by Harry M. Kaiser

Economists generally rely on highly aggregated market-wide time series data when doing econometric evaluation of checkoff programs. This type of data is generally collected and available from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and is inexpensive and often free. At the other extreme is household-level data, which are substantially more disaggregated by product, time, and demographics. Contrary to the aggregate data, household data are very expensive to obtain. Unfortunately, the expense of this data has frequently been prohibitive enough to prevent widespread use in econometric evaluations.

NICPRE was awarded a contract last year to do the evaluation of the Fluid Milk and Dairy Acts, and as part of that contract, NICPRE was able to obtain a household data set for fluid milk and cheese weekly purchases over the period 1996-99. We have just completed a study that estimates household-level demands for fluid milk and cheese products with this data set, and the report is summarized in this issue of the NICPRE Quarterly. As one will see after reading this article, this type of data, although expensive, allows economists to perform several unique types of analysis that cannot be done with the more aggregate data. Indeed, this is one of the first studies we have published in the Quarterly that has used this type of data, so it should be of interest.