Threshold Effects of Infectious Disease Outbreaks on Livestock Prices: Cases of African Swine Fever and Avian Influenza in South Korea

Abstract

In this paper we demonstrate the threshold effects of infectious diseases on livestock prices. Daily retail prices of pork and chicken were used as structured data; news and SNS mentions of African Swine Fever (ASF) and Avian Influenza (AI) were used as unstructured data. Models were tested for the threshold effects of disease-related news and SNS frequencies, specifically those related to ASF and AI, on the retail prices of pork and chicken, respectively. The effects were found to exist, and the values of ASF-related news on pork prices were estimated to be −9 and 8, indicating that the threshold autoregressive (TAR) model can be divided into three regimes. The coefficients of the ASF-related SNS frequencies on pork prices were 1.1666, 0.2663 and −0.1035 for regimes 1, 2 and 3, respectively, suggesting that pork prices increased by 1.1666 Korean won in regime 1 when ASF-related SNS frequencies increased. To promote pork consumption by SNS posts, the required SNS frequencies were estimated to have impacts as great as one standard deviation in the pork price. These values were 247.057, 1309.158 and 2817.266 for regimes 1, 2 and 3, respectively. The impact response periods for pork prices were estimated to last 48, 6, and 8 days for regimes 1, 2 and 3, respectively. When the prediction accuracies of the TAR and autoregressive (AR) models with regard to pork prices were compared for the root mean square error, the prediction accuracy of the TAR model was found to be slightly better than that of the AR. When the threshold effect of AI-related news on chicken prices was tested, a linear relationship appeared without a threshold effect. These findings suggest that when infectious diseases such as ASF occur for the first time, the impact on livestock prices is significant, as indicated by the threshold effect and the long impact response period. Our findings also suggest that the impact on livestock prices is not remarkable when infectious diseases occur multiple times, as in the case of AI. To date, this study is the first to suggest the use of SNS to promote meat consumption.

Operational Strategy of Reconfigurable Multi-Effect Evaporation Processes for Bio-Based Amino Acid Production

“…Nevertheless, successful applications of RMS in commercial microbial bioprocesses for animal feed grade amino acids were reported . The application of RMS in animal feed grade amino acids can be effective because of various factors: (1) the market demand is influenced by fluctuations in the prices of carbon , and nitrogen sources, the raw materials for amino acids and proteins, , and competitors of amino acids; (2) technical advancements being made in biotechnology over time , requires modification of the manufacturing processes or operating conditions; (3) unpredictable changes in socio-environmental factors, such as international conflicts, , climate change, and natural disasters, can change market demands; (4) the need for eco-friendly product reducing CO 2 emissions have potential impact on the amino acid market. − …”