In addition, the depreciation of the currency during the 1990’s may have helped to increase the cost of capital, which would have accelerated the decline in the capital-labour ratio. [...] Conversely, as the dollar appreciated, the simple arithmetic of the appreciation caused the spread between the beef revenue and the cattle costs to narrow. [...] It means that if the US cattle price is unchanged and the exchange rate changes, the change in the exchange rate will be fully reflected in the cattle price. [...] The higher the price of grain, the higher the cost of gain of the animal and the 8 Linear regression is used as a technique to assess whether there is a relationship between two variables. [...] The lower the r-squared, the wider the spread of data around the predicted line.