Using Individual-Level Randomized Treatment to Learn about Market Structure
Interference across competing firms in RCTs can be informative about market structure. An experiment that subsidizes a random subset of traders who buy cocoa from farmers in Sierra Leone illustrates this idea. Interpreting treatment-control differences in prices and quantities purchased from farmers through a model of Cournot competition reveals differentiation between traders is low. Combining this result with quasi-experimental variation in world prices shows that the number of traders competing is 50 percent higher than the number operating in a village. Own-price and cross-price supply elasticities are high. Farmers face a competitive market in this first stage of the value chain.
Main Authors: | , |
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Format: | Journal Article biblioteca |
Language: | en_US |
Published: |
American Economic Association
2022-10
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Subjects: | RCT, RANDOMISED CONTROL TRIALS, MEASURING COCOA QUALITY, EFFECTIVE PRICES, ALTERNATIVE ESTIMATION, MARKET STRUCTURE, |
Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10986/38473 |
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