The Economic Impacts of New Technologies and Promotions on the Australian Beef Industry

Abstract

Around $100 million has been spent annually on R&D and promotion in the Australian red meat industries in recent years. Producer groups have been questioning the pay-offs from these investments. These pay-offs are also a public policy issue since the coercive powers of government are used to underpin the levy system and government also directly contributes to research expenditures. In this thesis, an equilibrium displacement model (EDM) of the Australian beef industry is specified and simulated to study the returns from alternative research and promotion investments. The model is more disaggregated than existing studies of the beef industry. It provides an economic framework for cost-benefit analysis of various investments in the industry, as well as for examining the impacts of other exogenous changes such as government price and tax policies.