Demand For Cereals Research Articles

Cereals demand in the Sahel and potential impacts of regional cereals protection

Recent policy debate in the Sahel has focused on a regional protection zone for cereals. This paper discusses crosscountry evidence of consumption patterns and the sensitivity of these to policy variables, and considers potential income-distribution and efficiency impacts of a rice tariff increase. A tariff would hurt the poor in the short term because the poor depend to a large extent on rice as a “fast food,” purchased from street vendors. The trend toward rice consumption is a long-term, structural phenomenon, linked to urbanization, rather than to short-term price changes. Maize and millet/sorghum are substitutes in consumption, which should serve to encourage development of maize in the Guinean zone to help assure Sahel food security in drought years.

Demand for Cereals in Seventh Plan

The objective of this paper is to estimate the demand for cereals in 1989-90, which happens to be the terminal year for the Seventh Five Year Plan and thus, to have a check to the figures presented in the plan document.

A Neoclassical Analysis of the Demand for Cereals in Egypt

A Neoclassical Analysis of the Demand for Cereals in Egypt

The problem of changing parameters in demand analysis and forecasting

Particularly in a demand analysis of long time-series data, the validity of the assumption of a constant regression relationship over time is open to question. The examination of changes in the parameters is of crucial importance if the model is used to make forecasts. To detect such changes, tests based on recursive residuals can be applied. When examining the demand for cereals in Finland between 1950 and 1975, the hypothesis of constancy of the regression parameters was rejected on the basis of these tests. Forecasts of cereal consumption were then made by means of weighted regression technics.