Doctoral Dissertation Research: Subjective Expectations, Information and Competitiveness in East African Agricultural Output Markets

智力价值拟议的研究解决了东非农业市场运作的关键问题，特别侧重于坦桑尼亚的棉花市场。在过去20年中，坦桑尼亚在价格自由化和与世界商品市场一体化方面迈出了重要步伐。虽然市场自由化的潜在好处已为人们所熟知，但农业产出市场目前的结构和运作是否有利于农村穷人，这一点并不完全清楚，因为农村穷人是本区域发展政策的主要重点。简而言之，虽然发展战略越来越多地依靠市场来指导资源分配，但研究人员对非洲农村市场的市场运作和由此产生的价格模式知之甚少。PI提出了三个关于坦桑尼亚棉花市场的重要问题：第一，农民的主观价格和产量预期与他们的生产和销售选择之间的关系是什么？第二，注意到生产者价格在时间和空间上存在着相当大的差异，那么决定特定生产者实际价格的农民、贸易商和当地市场的特点是什么？第三，棉花贸易商赚取的价差利润是与充分竞争更一致，还是与非竞争、串通行为更一致？PI通过收集两个独特的数据集来解决这些问题。为了解决第一个问题，他们将向农民提供手机，并在整个种植、耕作、收获和销售年度中每两个月收集一次他们对收获时间、价格和产量的直接、主观期望。为了评估后两个问题，他们将对农业贸易商进行为期两年的小组调查，贸易商与世界银行和坦桑尼亚国家统计局收集的为期三年的小组成员中的农民相匹配。该项目的结果将为价格发现和形成过程以及低收入农村地区市场运作和供应反应之间的关系提供新的线索。通过强调个人层面的预期在决定农业生产和营销决策方面所发挥的作用，该研究加入了最近的一项研究，快速增长的文献将对预期的重要性的见解纳入经济结果的分析。贸易商竞争力的问题是一个开放的问题，最近的论文已经讨论过，但没有像他们提议的那样，建立一个农民-贸易商配对小组。他们旨在收集的两个数据集都具有高度创新性。目前还没有对商贩和农民进行的配对调查，也没有尝试在较长时间内定期使用手机收集主观期望。因此，除了解决农业和发展经济学前沿的重要问题外，这项研究还将开创新的数据收集方法，这些方法可能有助于在其他环境中收集高频主观数据。更广泛的影响世界农业市场最近的波动，以及由于有机燃料使用增加、商品市场投机和气候变化而预期的持续波动，使PI解决的问题不仅对东非农村政策的设计和该领域知识的进步，而且对更广泛地理解全球化商品市场的运作及其与低收入农业国家农村减贫的联系都很重要。如果全球初级商品市场的价格变化不能干净地传递给农民，或者如果农民不根据市场发展情况调整自己的期望和行为，那么决策者在设计和实施基于市场的全球贫困解决方案时必须考虑到这一点。非政府组织、政府各部、国际捐助组织、私营部门农业企业界以及国家和区域媒体应广泛关注这项研究的结果

Intellectual MeritThe proposed research addresses critical questions about the operation of agricultural markets in East Africa, focusing specifically on cotton markets in Tanzania. Over the last two decades Tanzania has made significant steps toward price liberalization and integration with world commodity markets. While the potential benefits of market liberalization are well understood, it is not entirely clear that the current structure and operation of agricultural output markets benefit the rural poor, who are the primary focus of development policy in this region. Simply put, although development strategies increasingly rely on markets to guide resource allocation, researchers know remarkably little about market functioning and the resulting price patterns in rural African markets. The PI's ask three important questions about Tanzanian cotton markets: First, what is the relationship between the subjective price and yield expectations held by farmers and their production and marketing choices? Second, noting that there exists considerable temporal and spatial dispersion of producer prices, what are the farmer, trader and local market characteristics that determine the actual price received by a particular producer? Third, are the price spreads earned as profits by cotton traders more consistent with full competition or with non-competitive, collusive behavior? The PI's address these questions by gathering two unique data sets. To address the first question, they will supply farmers with cell phones and collect their immediate, subjective expectations regarding harvest time prices and yields at bimonthly intervals throughout the course of an entire planting, cultivation, harvest and marketing year. To assess the second two questions, they will conduct a two-year panel survey of agricultural traders, with traders matched to farmers who are part of a three-year panel being gathered by the World Bank and Tanzanian National Bureau of Statistics. The results of the project will shed new light on price discovery and formation processes, and on the relation between market functioning and supply response in low-income rural areas.By emphasizing the role that expectations at the individual level play in determining agricultural production and marketing decisions, the research joins a recent, fast-growing literature incorporating insights about the importance of expectations into the analysis of economic outcomes. The question of trader competitiveness is an open one that has been addressed in recent papers, but without the benefit of a matched farmer-trader panel like the one they propose to gather. The two data sets they aim to gather are both highly innovative. There are no available matched trader-farmer surveys, and no attempts have been made to use cell phones to capture subjective expectations at regular intervals over an extended period. Thus in addition to addressing important questions on the frontier of agricultural and development economics, the research will pioneer new data collection methods that could prove useful for gathering high frequency subjective data in other settings.Broader ImpactRecent volatility in world agricultural markets, and the expected ongoing volatility from increased use of organic fuels, speculation in commodity markets and climate change, make the questions the PI's address important not only for the design of policy in rural east Africa and the advancement of knowledge in the field, but also for broader understanding of the workings of globalized commodity markets and their connection to rural poverty reduction in low-income, agrarian nations. If price changes in global commodity markets do not transmit cleanly to farmers, or if farmers do not adjust their expectations and behavior in response to market developments, then policymakers must take this into account in the design and implementation of market-based solutions to global poverty. The findings from this study should be of broad interest to non-governmental organizations, government ministries, international donor organizations, the private sector agribusiness community and national and regional media