African agricultural markets are characterized by low farmer revenues and high consumer food prices. Many have worried that this wedge is partially driven by imperfect competition among intermediaries.
This project will examine whether quality-upgrading incentives and access to a buyer willing to pay a premium for high-quality products can raise profits and welfare in Uganda.
The introduction of labor-saving technologies in agriculture can release workers who find occupation in the manufacturing sector. The traditional view is that this structural transformation process leads to economic growth.
This research note describes experimental evidence from Kenya on intermediary market structure. We find that traders act consistently with joint profit maximization.
Mobile phones are almost universally available, and the costs of information transmission are low. They are used by smallholder farmers in low-income countries, largely successfully, to optimize markets for their produce. Fabregas et al.
Sending SMS messages with agricultural advice to smallholder farmers increased yields by 11.5% relative to a control group with no messages. These effects are concentrated among farmers who had no agronomy training and had little interaction with sugar cane company staff at baseline.
Large and regular seasonal price fluctuations in local grain markets appear to offer African farmers substantial intertemporal arbitrage opportunities, but these opportunities remain largely unexploited.
This project aims to rigorously identify what type of market arrangements and infrastructure provide the most sustainable environment for agricultural rental markets of equipment to arise, or how the entry of formal rental opportunities impact informal renting arrangements.
