العوامل المؤثرة في دالة الطلب على اللحوم الحمراء : دراسة تطبيقية على حالة الاقتصاد الأردني (1976-1998)‎

Abstract EN

It is believed that agricultural sector plays an important role in the national economy, in terms of its contribution to Gross Domestic Product (GDP), employment, trade balance, food security and food sufficiency.

Therefore, economic development theory stressed the importance of development and introduction advanced technology to agriculture sector.

In the Jordanian case, agricultural sector contribution to GDP was 4.8 %, measured as the ratio of agriculture output to GDP.

This contribution is relatively low compared to other economic sectors, yet it is still vital to the economy in reducing food dependency.

With regard to red meat in Jordan as the focus of this paper, red meat production is far below the sufficiency level, which equals to 48 % in year 1998.

Consequently, Jordan has to import red meat from abroad to fulfil the consumption gap, causing an increase in trade balance deficit.

As a result, a number of economic research efforts have concentrated on the supply side of red meat production.

The focus of these studies was the determinants of red production.

The demand side of red meat concentrates on the factors affecting (temand (expenditures) for red meat.

The results showed that there are a number of economic and demographic variables, such as Gross Domestic Product, inflation, population, remittances, foreign aid and exchange rate, which can influence consumption of red meat.

The red meat consumption pattern has been fluctuating over the study period depending on the stages of economic performance of the Jordanian economy.

The consumption of red meat achieved average annual growth rate equals to 13.6 % over the whole period, while it achieved average annual growth rate equals to 32.27 %, 21.6 %, and 9.49 % over the first period (1976-1985), second period (1986-1990), and the third period (1991-1998) respectively.

The present study aims to investigate the quantitative impact of a set of economic and non economic variables on red meat consumption in Jordan, and draw some conclusions that are expected to provide some policy implication.

A descriptive approach is used to describe the red meat consumption pattern over the study period.

A quantitative approach is used to figure out the quantitative impact of the selected variables.

An econometric model of the demand function for red meat contains selected variables that are expected to influence consumption of red meat.

The Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) method is utilized to estimate the coefficients of the included variables in the logarithmic form of the model.

The necessary data needed to estimate the function was collected from Central Bank of Jordan, Department of statistics, and Ministry of Agriculture.

The estimation results are in accord with the wisdom of the economic theory.

The results showed a positive a significant impact of national income (GDP), real money supply, and population size on the red meat consumption level (expenditures).

On the other hand, the estimation results showed a significant negative impact of price level, lagged period, and exchange rate on the consumption of red meat.