Cattle and sheep cycles and price transmission processes

The project will aim to educate stakeholders about the cattle and sheep cycles and other factors that have a significant impact on beef and sheepmeat market conditions, using advanced econometric analysis producing objective results, thus improving the understanding of, support for and efficient functioning of the red meat processing industry. The project will have two parts: the first will analyse the long-term relationships between the prices of cattle/sheep and beef/sheepmeat and other key factors such as herd size, slaughter numbers, and weather to illustrate the functioning of the ‘cattle cycle’ and the ‘sheep cycle’. The second part will analyse long term price relationships along the supply chain to indicate the factors determining the transmission of the prices at the different market levels and so indicate the degree of market efficiency.