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

智力价值拟议的研究针对东非农业市场运作的关键问题，特别关注坦桑尼亚的棉花市场。在过去二十年中，坦桑尼亚在实现价格自由化和与世界商品市场接轨方面取得了重大进展。虽然市场自由化的潜在好处是众所周知的，但目前农业产出市场的结构和运作是否有利于农村贫困人口并不完全清楚，因为他们是该区域发展政策的主要重点。简而言之，尽管发展战略越来越依赖市场来指导资源分配，但研究人员对市场功能以及由此导致的非洲农村市场的价格模式知之甚少。PI问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产销选择之间有什么关系？第二，注意到生产者价格在时间和空间上存在相当大的分散性，决定特定生产者实际价格的农民、贸易商和当地市场特征是什么？第三，棉花贸易商作为利润赚取的价差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、种植、收获和销售年度的整个过程中，每隔两个月收集农民对收获季节价格和产量的即时主观预期。为了评估后两个问题，他们将对农产品贸易商进行为期两年的小组调查，让贸易商与世界银行和坦桑尼亚国家统计局正在收集的一个为期三年的小组的农民进行匹配。该项目的结果将为低收入农村地区的价格发现和形成过程以及市场功能和供应反应之间的关系提供新的解释。通过强调个人层面的预期在决定农业生产和营销决策中的作用，该研究加入了最近快速增长的文献，该文献将预期的重要性纳入经济结果分析。交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了这个问题，但没有像他们提议收集的那样，得到一个匹配的农民-交易商小组的好处。他们打算收集的两个数据集都具有很强的创新性。没有匹配的交易者-农民调查，也没有人尝试使用手机在较长一段时间内定期捕捉主观预期。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，这些方法可能被证明有助于在其他环境中收集高频主观数据。广泛的影响世界农业市场最近的波动，以及预期的有机燃料使用增加、商品市场投机和气候变化的持续波动，使PI解决的问题不仅对于东非农村政策的设计和该领域知识的发展至关重要，而且对于更广泛地了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也是重要的。如果全球大宗商品市场的价格变化没有干净地传递给农民，或者农民没有根据市场发展调整他们的预期和行为，那么政策制定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。这项研究的结果应引起非政府组织、政府各部、国际捐助组织、私营部门农业综合企业界以及国家和区域媒体的广泛关注

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