By: Christina Ladd
May 15, 2020
During the onset of the covid-19 pandemic, health and safety shutdowns led to unusually high unemployment rates, reducing liquid income, and impacting the market system broadly. One of the shocks to the economy hit the meat market, which relies on futures predictions as an assessment of stock of cattle as an input or intermediary good to many other sectors of the economy such as restaurants and supermarkets. The ripple from marketplace to supplier caused concerns for cattle ranchers who predicted a good year amid large deals particularly with China in the meat market. My simplified regression analysis of the effects possible in the beef market showed effects on the beef market linked to unemployment and beef price effects. The summary and regression analysis results here show a 81 percent correlation between leading factors and beef price increases.
Econemetricious 