Transaction costs play a key role in the behaviour of smallholders in developing countries. We exploit the quasi experimental design of the introduction of an additional tobacco auction floor in Malawi in order to investigate the impact of a reduction in transaction costs and improved market...

We estimate to what extent bridges in Mozambique lead to transport cost reductions and attribute these reductions to key determinants, in particular road distance, road quality and crossing borders. For identification we exploit the introduction of a road bridge over the Zambezi river, in August...

Transaction costs play a key role in the behaviour of smallholders in developing countries. We investigate smallholder tobacco cultivation in Malawi, Malawi’s major export crop, and exploit the introduction of an additional tobacco auction floor to measure the impact of a reduction in...

We measure the impact of low cost transport by rail in Malawi on the dispersion of agricultural commodities prices across markets, by exploiting the quasi experimental design of the nearly total collapse of domestic transport by rail in January 2003, due to the destruction of a railway bridge at...

Transaction costs play a key role in the behaviour of smallholders in developing countries. We exploit the introduction of an additional tobacco auction floor in Malawi to investigate the impact of a reduction in transaction costs and improved market access on production per hectare and the...

Halal certification of financials product may reduce transaction costs for its buyers when it provides a trusted standard for investors that seek to comply with Islamic law. However, we show that in practice it takes considerable amounts of time (20 days ) and money (USD 122,000) to obtain a...

Halal certification of financials product may reduce transaction costs for its buyers when it provides a trusted standard for investors that seek to comply with Islamic law. However, we show that in practice it takes considerable amounts of time (20 days) and money (USD 122,000) to obtain a...

This paper introduces the Small World model (Watts and Strogatz, Nature, 1998) into the theory of economic growth and investigates how increasing economic integration affects firm size and efficiency, norm enforcement, and aggregate economic performance. When economic integration is low and...

Transaction costs are a major reason why international trade flows are much smaller than traditional trade theory would suggest. Trust between trading partners lowers transaction costs and may therefore enhance trade. The empirical analysis of this paper shows that more trust leads to more trade...

We measure the impact of low cost transport by rail in Malawi on the dispersion of agricultural commodities prices across markets, by exploiting the quasi experimental design of the nearly total collapse of domestic trade by rail in January 2003, due to the destruction of a railway bridge at...