Simulation results showed that simultaneous outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in Asia, the United States, Brazil, and selected European countries will have significant impacts on world poultry trade. Assuming demand for chicken meat is constant, the global export price is simulated to increase by 9.63%. HPAI outbreaks in the United States, Economic Union, and Brazil will have a greater impact on export price than in any other possible three-region case. Outbreaks in the United States and Brazil would still lead to major impacts on world poultry trade, confirming large country effects.

This study examines short-run and long-run unbiasedness within the U.S. rice futures market. Standard OLS, cointegration, and error-correction models are used to determine unbiasedness. In addition, the forecasting performance of the rice futures market is analyzed and compared to out-of-sample forecasts derived from an additive ARIMA model and the error-correction model. The results of our unbiasedness tests and the forecasting performance of the rice futures market provide supporting evidence that the U.S. long-grain rough rice futures market is efficient. The results have important price risk management and price discovery implications for Arkansas and U.S. rice industry participants.

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Predominance of production and marketing contracts in the broiler industry suggests a traditional analysis of price relationships might no longer be appropriate. In this study, markets for broiler cuts are defined as spatial. Results of a vector autoregressive regression analysis of monthly USDA data from 1987 to 2000 verify the price relationship between white meat and whole broiler prices. Price shocks in the boneless skinless breast market have a greater effect than dark meat shocks, suggesting this market is most important in price transmission. These results will assist industry participants to form more effective marketing and pricing strategies, thus adding efficiency to the market.

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