One of the arguments against the Fair Trade scheme is that the guaranteed minimum price tends to depress world prices and thus the incomes of non-participating farmers (e.g. The Economist, 2006). We develop a model that distinguishes between the impact of the introduction of a Fair Trade market...

Fairtrade labeling has the potential to increase market efficiency by connecting farmers to altruistic consumers who are willing to pay a premium for sustainability-certified products. A requirement for increased efficiency, though, is that the farmers' benefits are larger than the Fairtrade...

Fair trade coffee is a cup half full, according to Raluca Dragusanu, Daniele Giovannucci, and Nathan Nunn in “The Economics of Fair Trade” (Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2014, vol. 28, no. 3, pp. 217–36). We are not persuaded

The Fair Trade coffee market has emerged as a response to the adverse conditions faced by small-scale coffee producers. Though the market has grown steadily, it has received criticism from inside and outside the Fair Trade system. This paper examines three critical elements of Fair Trade...

This paper investigates the impact of social preferences and information about the value chain on the willingness to pay (WTP) for Fair-trade products. More specifically, the perceived social and economic benefits for Fair-trade farmers are analyzed in order to study whether altruistic...

This document, first created in 2007 and last updated in 2010, has now been superseded by the technical discussion in my 2010 article, Privatization, Free Riding, and Industry-Expanding Lobbying, in the International Review of Law and Economics and the plain-English discussion in my 2008...