320
Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, April 2008
Table 2. Summary Statistics
|
Variable |
N |
Mean |
Standard Deviation |
Minimum |
Maximum |
|
price |
8,285 |
2,564.8100 |
1,908.1000 |
875.000 |
51,500.000 |
|
Production measures | |||||
|
age |
8,285 |
447.211 |
124.726 |
98.000 |
1,829.000 |
|
age2 |
8,285 |
215,552.320 |
144,818.150 |
9,604.000 |
3,345,241.000 |
|
birthwt |
7,986 |
83.470 |
9.894 |
40.000 |
124.000 |
|
adjweanwt |
8,063 |
659.967 |
71.860 |
378.000 |
988.000 |
|
adjyearwt |
7,380 |
1,168.310 |
113.814 |
636.000 |
1,742.000 |
|
adjpctimf |
7,255 |
3.706 |
0.859 |
0.810 |
10.450 |
|
adjribeye |
7,243 |
12.368 |
1.569 |
6.500 |
18.800 |
|
adjribfat |
7,259 |
0.269 |
0.100 |
0.010 |
0.770 |
|
EPDs | |||||
|
birthepd |
8,227 |
2.553 |
1.562 |
23.800 |
9.600 |
|
weanepd |
8,253 |
38.256 |
6.688 |
11.000 |
71.000 |
|
milkepd |
8,253 |
20.284 |
4.622 |
0.000 |
36.000 |
|
yearepd |
8,252 |
72.592 |
11.358 |
19.000 |
125.000 |
|
cwtepd |
4,575 |
5.185 |
6.327 |
216.000 |
30.000 |
|
marbepd |
4,575 |
0.182 |
0.121 |
20.130 |
0.750 |
|
ribepd |
4,575 |
0.129 |
0.127 |
20.350 |
0.590 |
|
fatepd |
4,575 |
0.002 |
0.015 |
20.045 |
0.054 |
|
prpepd |
4,575 |
0.059 |
0.242 |
20.870 |
0.770 |
|
uimfepd |
7,814 |
0.065 |
0.135 |
20.400 |
0.740 |
|
uribepd |
7,814 |
0.123 |
0.212 |
20.620 |
1.000 |
|
ufatepd |
7,814 |
0.004 |
0.015 |
20.059 |
0.064 |
|
uprpepd |
7,814 |
0.020 |
0.279 |
20.960 |
1.200 |
|
Marketing factors | |||||
|
saleorder |
8,285 |
0.501 |
0.289 |
0 |
1 |
|
sementhird |
8,285 |
0.197 |
0.398 |
0 |
1 |
|
semenhalf |
8,285 |
0.078 |
0.267 |
0 |
1 |
|
seasonofsale |
8,285 |
0.771 |
0.421 |
0 |
1 |
|
picture |
8,285 |
0.108 |
0.311 |
0 |
1 |
|
et |
8,285 |
0.214 |
0.410 |
0 |
1 |
|
fullbrother |
8,285 |
0.101 |
0.301 |
0 |
1 |
|
pathfinder |
8,285 |
0.058 |
0.234 |
0 |
1 |
|
femaleinsale |
8,285 |
0.456 |
0.498 |
0 |
1 |
birth, weaning, milk, and yearling weights.
Carcass EPDs include carcass weight, mar-
bling, ribeye area, fat thickness, and percent
retail product, while ultrasound EPDs include
intramuscular fat, ribeye area, fat thickness,
and percent retail product. The marketing
factors recorded from each sale are sale order,
semen retention, seasonality of the sale,
picture, embryo transfer, pathfinder dam,
and the inclusion of full brothers in the sale.
Sire is a series of dummy variables used to
capture bulls who are the progeny of highly
ranked Angus sires. States/sales are dummy
variables used to identify bulls sold in a
particular state or sale.
Visual observation and a Jarque-Bera test
indicated that the raw bull prices were not
normally distributed. Following Dhuyvetter et
al., prices were transformed to natural log
form, resulting in a visually more normally
distributed data series. A nonnested J-test of
competing models failed to indicate that either
model (raw data or natural log) was superior
to the other. Therefore, following previous
research that utilized data of this nature, this
analysis was conducted using the natural log