Fish and Meat Demand in Canada: Regional Differences and Weak Separability

The objective of this paper is to gauge to what extent there are regional differences in meat and fish demand across Canada. Three regions are defined for this purpose and the notorious problem of zeros in survey data is addressed by endogenizing the probability of purchase through the Shonkwiler and Yen approach applied to a QUAIDS demand system for each region. Probabilities of purchase and marginal effects are computed and compared as well as price and expenditure elasticities. The empirical distributions of the elasticities are simulated through bootstrapping. This allows us to formally test the null hypothesis of no regional differences between elasticities for central, western and Atlantic Canada and the null hypothesis of weak separability of fish from meats. While some significant regional differences were uncovered that can be exploited by food retailers, other findings were robust across regions. For example, the demand for fish tends to be more price and expenditure inelastic than the demand for meats. lEconLit citations: D120, C150, L660r. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Agribusiness 22: 175-199, 2006.