During the structural adjustment era of the 1980s and 1990s, governments across sub-Saharan Africa generally withdrew from food markets in order to encourage entry by private traders and foster competition. Since that time, the degree to which private crop traders actively compete and pass on...

Do poor households shop in a way that leaves money on the table? A simple way to maximize consumption, conditional on available cash, is to avoid regularly purchasing small amounts of nonperishable goods when bulk discounts are available at modestly larger quantities. Using two-week transaction...

Despite average per-capita consumption of roughly $1 per day, many Tanzanian households do not take advantage of bulk discounts for staple goods. Using transaction diaries covering nearly 57,000 purchases by 1,499 households over two weeks, we find that through bulk purchasing the average...