TITLE:
Estimating Demand for Lamb, Beef, Pork, and Poultry in Canada
AUTHORS:
Zakary Rodrigue Diakité
KEYWORDS:
Meat Demand, Estimation, Almost Ideal Demand System, Elasticity of Demand, Expenditure
JOURNAL NAME:
Theoretical Economics Letters,
Vol.14 No.1,
February
8,
2024
ABSTRACT: This paper
investigates the demand for lamb, beef, pork, and poultry in Canada, both at
the national level and in disaggregated provinces, to identify meat consumption
patterns in different provinces. Meat consumption plays a significant role in
Canada’s economy and is an
important source of calories for the population. However, meat demand faces
several consumption challenges due to logistic constraints, as a significant
portion of the supply is imported from other countries. Therefore, there is a
need for a better understanding of the causal relationships underlying lamb,
beef, pork, and poultry consumption in Canada. Until recently, there have been
no attempts to estimate meat consumption at the provincial level in Canada. Different
Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS) models have been applied for testing
specifications to circumvent several econometric and theoretical problems. In
particular, generalized AIDS and its Quadratic extension QUAIDS methods have been estimated across each province using the Iterative Linear
Least Squares Estimator (ILLE) estimation Method. Weekly retail meat
consumption price and quantity data from 2019 to 2022 have been used for Canada
and for each province namely Quebec, Maritime provinces (New Brunswick, Nova
Scotia, and Prince Edward Island), Ontario, total West (Yukon, Northwest
Territory and Nunavut), Alberta, Manitoba-Saskatchewan and Manitoba as well as
British Columbia. Consistent coefficients and demand elasticities estimates
reveal patterns of substitution and/or complementarity between the four
categories of meat. Meat consumption patterns differ across each province.
Results show that the demand for the four categories of meat is responsive to
price changes. Overall, lamb expenditure was found to be elastic and thus
considered a luxury good during the study period, while the other three
categories are considered normal goods across Canada.