Volume 11, Issue 2 (2016) An Econometric Analysis of the Nebraska Livestock Friendly County Program

This article examines whether the Nebraska Livestock Friendly County Program (LFCP) has resulted in cattle and hog expansion in the state as intended. The analysis draws on the theory of long-run competitive equilibrium to specify econometric models that identify the determinants of cattle and hog farm numbers. Using county level census data, the econometric models were estimated with heteroscedasticity-consistent standard errors and corrected for multicollinearity using the variance inflation factor procedure. Results show an effect of LFCP on both cattle and hog expansion.