On Nonlinear Dynamics: The Case of the Pork Cycle

New methods for analyzing nonlinear dynamic processes are used to evaluate the hogcorn price ratio. The results present evidence of nonlinear dynamics in the pork cycle. Moreover, while GARCH processes account for some of the nonlinearities, the pork cycle is apparently characterized by more complex dynamic forms. The empirical analysis provides some evidence of the presence of chaos in the pork cycle. The results also indicate that the dynamic process generating the pork cycle is nonlinear and cannot be adequately characterized by a small number of state variables.