Price information, inter-village networks, and bargaining spillovers: Experimental evidence from Ghana✩

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Soldani, Emilia; Hildebrandt, Nicole; Nyarko, Yaw; Romagnoli, Giorgia
• 署名单位: New York University; New York University Abu Dhabi; Boston Consulting Group (BCG); New York University; University of Amsterdam
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3878
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2023.103100
• 发表日期: 2023
• 关键词: Price information; agriculture; bargaining; ICTs; networks; externalities

摘要

Through a randomized experiment and detailed data on inter-village communication, we identify the impact of providing commodity price information to smallholder farmers. For yam, a crop with high prevalence of bargaining, the intervention leads to a 9% increase in the prices received by farmers in the treatment group in the first year and possibly to mixed indirect effects in the second year in areas with high density of treatment. While control farmers do not gain price information, we speculate that bargaining spillovers might lead to indirect benefits and capture this intuition in a formal model. The intervention has no impact on other crops grown in the area, which are characterized by different market structures and lower incidence of bargaining. The results expand our understanding of the market structure characteristics that affect the effectiveness of ICT interventions and highlight the importance of considering longer-run inter-village spillover effects.