Producer Returns from Increased Milk Advertising

Each year many agricultural commodity groups spend millions of dollars advertising and promoting generic products. However, empirical analyses of particular generic promotion ventures are scarce (Clement, Henderson, and Eley; Hochman, Regev, and Ward; Nerlove and Waugh). Advertising and promotional monies are often obtained from producers on a voluntary contribu-tion basis, but a major criticism of voluntary pro-grams is that in an atomistic industry the individual producer has little incentive to advertise since his particular share of the increased commodity de-mand is small. A major argument for mandatory participation is that of equity; however, little economic evidence is available to address the po-