Journal
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS
Volume 89, Issue 4, Pages 890-903Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8276.2007.01026.x
Keywords
cattle markets; decision-making bias; grading; human-judgement error
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Live cattle are increasingly priced as an explicit function of U.S. Department of Agriculture yield and quality grades. Human graders visually inspect each slaughtered carcass and call grades in a matter of seconds as the carcass passes on a moving trolley. We examine whether there is systematic bias in grade calls using a sample of loads delivered to three different midwestern packing plants during 2000-2002. Overall, results indicate that indeed there is a bias, and that grading standards vary significantly across packing plants. Results also are consistent with a behavioral model where graders are more accurate when grading relatively low-quality carcasses.
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