Asymmetric Information and Middleman Margins: An Experiment with Indian Potato Farmers

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Mitra, Sandip; Mookherjee, Dilip; Torero, Maximo; Visaria, Sujata
• 署名单位: Indian Statistical Institute; Indian Statistical Institute Kolkata; Boston University; The World Bank; Hong Kong University of Science & Technology
• 刊物名称: REVIEW OF ECONOMICS AND STATISTICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0034-6535
• DOI: 10.1162/REST_a_00699
• 发表日期: 2018-03
• 页码: 1-13
• 关键词: agricultural markets; performance; IMPACT

摘要

West Bengal potato farmers cannot directly access wholesale markets and do not knowwholesale prices. Local middlemen earn large margins; pass-through from wholesale to farmgate prices is negligible. When we informed farmers in randomly chosen villages about wholesale prices, average farmgate sales and prices were unaffected, but pass-through to farmgate prices increased. These results can be explained by a model where farmers bargain ex post with village middlemen, with the outside option of selling to middlemen outside the village. They are inconsistent with standard oligopolistic models of pass-through, search frictions, or risk-sharing contracts.