Essays on transaction costs and food diversity in developing countries

This thesis addresses 3 different aspects of food and poverty related problems in developing countries. The first essay presents a new operational concept of transaction costs that firstly allows assessing the magnitude and secondly recognizing the non homogeneity of food products. This is realized by providing an estimate of the value of the good by means of a hedonic food price model. A model is proposed that decomposes unit values into spatial price factors and a value component that allows the comparison with a feasible value occurring in a situation without transaction costs. The model...