The effect of recent agricultural market reforms in many developing countries is often measured through tests for market integration by analyzing co-variation of food prices. However, market integration studies often fail to link the discovery of the lack of integration to causal factors. This...

Using data on agricultural traders in Madagascar, this paper shows that social capital has a large effect on efficiency. Better connected traders are shown to have significantly larger sales and gross margins than less connected traders after controlling for physical and human inputs. The...

This paper documents the role that personal relationships play in economic exchange. Original survey data show that agricultural traders in Madagascar perceive relationships as the most important factor for success in their business.Evidence details the extent to which relationships are used to...

This paper is based on community-level data from 188 villages in rural Madagascar. The survey that was conducted in 1997 made extensive use of long-term recall questions ascertaining changes during the past 10 years in rice yields, wages, population, soil fertility, and other pertinent variables...

This paper is based on community-level data from 188 villages in rural Madagascar. The survey that was conducted in 1997 made extensive use of long-term recall questions ascertaining changes during the past 10 years in rice yields, wages, population, soil fertility, and other pertinent variables...

Summary This paper investigates the role of media and monitoring in reducing capture. We analyze data on capture of public expenditures by local officials in Madagascar. Our findings indicate important constraints on decentralization of public service delivery, in particular in remote areas....

Global retail companies ("supermarkets? have an increasing influence on developing countries, through foreign investments and/or through the imposition of their private standards. The impact on developing countries and poverty is often assessed as negative. In this paper we show the opposite,...

"Global retail chains are becoming increasingly dominant in the global food trade and their rise leads to dramatic impacts on agricultural supply chains and on small producers. However, the prospects and impacts of a food retail revolution in poor countries are not yet well understood. Here, we...

"Using original data collected about growers, traders, processors, markets, and village communities, we compare the situation in four states – Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Orissa. We examine the way that information about crop attributes is conveyed (or not) along the value...