College of Behavioral & Social Sciences
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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations..
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Item Information Technology and Rural Market Performance in Central India(2008-04-25) Goyal, Aparajita; Duggan, Mark; Kranton, Rachel; Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)How do improvements in information impact market performance? This dissertation examines the effect of an innovative initiative launched by a private company in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. Beginning in October 2000, it set up 1700 internet kiosks and 45 warehouses that provide wholesale price information and an alternative marketing channel to soybean farmers in the state. I develop a theoretical model of this intervention and estimate the impact using a new market-level dataset with spatial geo-coded information. The causal effect is isolated by exploiting the variation in the timing of the introduction of kiosks and warehouses across districts of the state. The estimates suggest an immediate and significant increase in the monthly wholesale market price of soybeans after the introduction of kiosks, lending support to the predictions of the theoretical model. While the presence of warehouses appears to have no effect on price, warehouses are associated with a dramatic reduction in the volume of sales in the traditional markets. Moreover, there is a significant increase in the area under soy cultivation. The estimates are robust to disaggregated measures of treatment and comparisons with alternative crops grown in the same season as soy. The analysis suggests that information can substantially enhance the functioning of rural markets by increasing the competitiveness of buyers.Item Essays on Commodity Market Liberalization, Spatial Competition and Farmer's Price.(2006-08-04) GOHOU, Gaston Logoue N; BETANCOURT, Roger; Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines the effects of commodity market liberalization on the farmer's price. Chapter two of this dissertation presents a theoretical model of commodity market liberalization which aims to analyze the impact of market liberalization on the farmer's price. This monopsony-type model includes three main features often studied separately in the literature: spatial competition among buyers, transaction costs, and the international environment. The model replicates the mixed results observed following commodity market liberalization. It also stresses the fact that the outcome of commodity market liberalization is ambiguous, unless the three features listed above can be controlled. The empirical model developed in chapter three is one of the few models that take advantage of the recent developments in the field of spatial econometrics, the availability of household survey data, and geographical information data in order to analyze the market reforms in developing countries. The empirical model tests for price competition and transaction costs using the Generalized Spatial Two-Stage Least Squares (GS2SLS) procedure, developed by Kelejian and Prucha (1998). The data is a two-period panel household survey data of rice farmer in Vietnam. The results show the presence of price competition among buyers during the two markets regimes. In addition, the level of competition decreases after the market liberalization. Regarding transaction costs, proportional transaction costs decrease after the market liberalization while fixed transaction costs do not affect farmer's price during both market regimes.