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> Rather than conjecture, why couldn't they just phone up each packer and ask if that's what's happening? Why do we need pontification in this case when we could just go look?

We know meat packers do this. The question is whether this behavior explains price asymmetry. There are reasons why it might not (e.g., other market actors in the beef market, goods substitution, cost of demand smoothing, shelf life, etc.)

The details matter, and no sane packer is going to release the models/algorithms/decision criteria they use to determine when and how to release stored inventory.

> The language in the paper just makes me think the whole thing should be ignored. E.g. there are sentences like:

I hate this.

It's researchers accurately reporting their findings. They aren't "pontificating". They are explaining the nuances of what they discovered when they tried to answer this question.

These days, you can't just ask a real questions in plain English and then accurately report your findings. If it's not TED Talkified bullshit, you'll get pilloried by the commentariate for being mealy mouthed. Our appetite for nuance is dead, and with it our appetite for truth.

Also, given the point you're trying to make, you picked a weird sentence for focus on when this sentence is in the intro:

> We do not reject the null hypothesis of symmetric responses to shocks at other points in the distribution chain when models are estimated using scanner retail price data.

Asking a question and finding that the answer is "yes, but not as bad as previously believed" is a contribution to our knowledge about the true state of the world.

View on HN

- using other data instead of BLS allows a different interpretation - perhaps asymmetric in favour of feedlot owners ("this effect is negligible, or cannot be captured by our impulse response-based test") - perhaps symmetric ("Our preferred interpretation is simpler, with the relationship being symmetric").

1. there now exists some doubt when summarising multiple papers on the topic, a contrarian view has now been injected into the discourse. The contrarian view is not backed up by hard facts, it's reasonable conjecture but nonetheless, when summarising the available papers on a topic, its views should be included in that summarisation, thus unfairly skewing the summarisation view. A view from conjecture is summarised next to views more directly evidenced in underlying data. 2. you can count on someone misrepresenting your findings. In our conversation you said "yes, but not as bad as previously believed", something the paper doesn't actually give hard evidence for but does try to suggest.