Foot-and-Mouth Disease Impacts on U.S. Pork Exports: A Comparative Study of the Spatial Econometric Model versus the Gravity Model

Abstract

A spatial econometric model was compared with a gravity model to investigate the influence of food-and-mouth disease on U.S. pork exports. Results show that disease impacts on importing countries lead to increased imports from the U.S. The empirical results for spatial econometric and gravity models are similar and consistent when fixed effects and zero observations are excluded. The results of Cragg’s model also reveal that disease-affected importing countries are potential pork traders with the U.S., but only importing countries with a vaccination policy are more likely to increase pork imports from the U.S.