Parameter Stability and the U.S. Demand for Beef

The main objective of this paper is to test the hypothesis that consumer preferences for beef in the United States have been affected by structural change, which reduces to testing for parameter stability in estimated demand equations. To this end, alternative specifications of the demand function are estimated using a general form of the Box-Cox transformation. Tests based on recursive residuals and on the F distribution provide little evidence of structural change, and suggest that the recent decline in beef consumption may be explained by changes in relative prices.