Distance between buyers and sellers can create search and contracting problems: how to find out what goods are available and ensure they are actually delivered.
Firms use relational contracts to support repeated trade. Do these informal agreements evolve in response to market conditions? In a market for ice, firms reestablish relationships on new terms when a prior agreement breaks down.
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.
In this paper Alé Chilet and Itin-Shwartz (2020) study the effectiveness of marketing channel liberalization in increasing competition among traders and prices obtained by farmers for their produce.
This research note describes experimental evidence from Kenya on intermediary market structure. We find that traders act consistently with joint profit maximization.
In this project, Grant, Grossman and Startz will collect, analyse, and make available to other researchers data that traces the distribution of manufactured consumer goods in Nigeria.
Several scholars argue that high agricultural productivity can retard industrial development because it draws resources toward the comparative advantage sector, agriculture.
