---

Many of our seminars and public events this year will continue as in person or as hybrid (online and in person) events.

Please check our website listings and Twitter feed @STICERD_LSE for updates.

Unless otherwise specified, in-person seminars are open to the public. Please ensure you have informed the event contact as early as possible.

Those unable to join the seminars in-person are welcome to participate via zoom if the event is hybrid.

---

About this event

In Eastern India farmers lack access to wholesale markets and instead transact with village traders. Multiple layers of intermediaries aggregate the produce and sell upward in the marketing chain. We use primary data from farmer and trader surveys in West Bengal to investigate the size of middleman margins, and the mechanisms that generate these frictions (trader market power, trader-farmer information asymmetries, or credit constraints). We find evidence (i) of large net margins to local traders (aggregated across vertical layers), (ii) that weekly retail (city) price shocks passed through to market prices at a rate four times higher than to farmgate prices; (iii) but that farmers report low search or switching costs across traders, low trade-credit interlinkage and the absence of ex ante risk-sharing marketing agreements. Randomized provision of market price information to farmers did not affect average farmgate prices, and there is limited evidence that it increased pass-through in a low-price environment. However, it did not change pass-through in a high-price environment.