Expectations and reality do not always match. This is especially true in rich democracies where citizens expect their voices to be heard, or else. This dynamic works most of the time, for most people, but not always with rational results. German statistician Ernst Engel noted that what people spend on food relative to their total consumption outlays varies based on income. Food comprises a larger share of outlays for the poor. This is true across different countries. There is an informal moral obligation to food, but the poor and the rich consume different calories. There is a policy view that food should not be regressive – that poor and rich should have equal opportunities when it comes to food. Thus, some do not want to restrict the...
Key Market Insights The broad market is locked in on this week’s Trump-Xi meeting in Beijing, but this is no longer just a trade summit. Increasingly, the meeting is becoming tied directly to Iran, energy security, and the growing global economic fallout from disruptions through the Strai...
From WPI Consulting
Communicating importance of value-added products
Facing increasing pressure to quantify the value of export promotion efforts to investors, a U.S. industry organization retained WPI to develop a quantitative model that better communicated the importance of exports. The resulting model concluded that value-added meat exports contributed $0.45 cents per bushel to the price of corn, increasing support for that sector’s financial support of WPI’s client. In addition to serving the red meat industry with this type of analysis, WPI has generated similar deliverables for the U.S. soybean and poultry/egg industries.