This study has been made to further explain the cattle cycle in the United States and in three selected regions. Structural models of the cattle cycle are specified and estimated, and hypotheses about their parameters are tested. For this study, the cattle cycle is divided into three cycles that include the inventory cycle, the price and income cycle and the slaughter and import cycle. Further analysis is then made to determine the important explanatory variables within each cycle. Several simultaneous equation models are constructed of the form:

y' (t)C + x' (t)B + u' (t) = o'

where y' (t), x' (t) and u' (t) are the row vectors, respectively, of the jointly dependent variables, the predetermined variables and the unobserved disturbances in the equations and where C and B are the matrices of the coefficients of the jointly dependent variables and of the predetermined variables, respectively.