This paper focuses on the poultry export market because of its increasingly important
role in U+S+ meat trade+ Given that a significant portion of total poultry production is
exported, the U+S+ poultry industry is potentially subject to changes in foreign markets’
economic conditions, transmitted via exchange rates fluctuations+ In recent years, Asian
and Russian market destinations have experienced significant level of economic uncertainty
and volatility in prices for poultry meat+ This paper contributes to the literature by
analyzing the impact of exchange rate volatility on U+S+ poultry trade over the period
1976 to 2000+ Also, this paper examines a comprehensive list of the top forty-nine importers
of U+S+ poultry+ These 49 importers account for over 85% of the total value of U+S+
poultry exports in 2000+ In addition to focusing on a particular agricultural commodity,
the effect of using alternative measures of exchange rate volatility is also investigated+
The rest of the paper is organized as follows+ Section two briefly discusses recent trends
in the U+S+ poultry industry+ Sections three and four describe the data set and the econometric
model formulation+ The fifth section presents the empirical results and the last
section offers concluding remarks