The market for traceability with applications to US feeder cattle

For voluntary traceability programs, a key interest for program designers and policy-makers is how to encourage participation. We contend that participating in voluntary traceability can be viewed as a product characteristic, and thus serves as a source of product differentiation. We study the implicit market for traceability systems for the first known time. In our empirical example, we use stated choice experiments to link feeder cattle sellers and buyers through premiums and discounts for cattle traceability systems. Using results from discrete choice models, we simulate changes in traceability supply and demand in response to prices and policies. We find that cost-share policies might be an effective way of encouraging participation for feeder cattle sellers and could serve as an alternative to mandating traceability.