IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/midasp/108184.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Evaluating the Impact on Market Performance of Investments in Market Information Systems: Methodological Challenges

Author

Listed:
  • Staatz, John M.
  • Kizito, Andrew M.
  • Weber, Michael T.
  • Dembele, Niama Nango

Abstract

Evaluating the impact on market performance of investments in agricultural market information systems (MIS) face several methodological challenges. These fall into two broad categories: (a) defining the dimensions of market performance to measure (which is a function of whom the MIS is designed to serve) and identifying reliable indicators of those performance dimensions, and (b) identifying the causal effects of the MIS. The determination of causal effects in turn requires establishing a credible baseline, measuring “treatment effects” (i.e., the effects on economic behavior of receiving improved information from an MIS), dealing with problems of endogenous placement of treatment, and interpreting the validity of stakeholders’ statements and governments’ revealed preferences regarding the utility of MIS. Many of these challenges arise because improved market information can affect the welfare of market actors through improved market polices and increased competition even if those actors do not have direct access to that information. The paper discusses these challenges and identifies approaches that may be useful in developing a “convergence of evidence” concerning whether investment in a given MIS is socially worthwhile.

Suggested Citation

  • Staatz, John M. & Kizito, Andrew M. & Weber, Michael T. & Dembele, Niama Nango, 2011. "Evaluating the Impact on Market Performance of Investments in Market Information Systems: Methodological Challenges," Staff Paper Series 108184, Michigan State University, Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:midasp:108184
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.108184
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/108184/files/StaffPaperStaatz2011-08.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.108184?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Aparajita Goyal, 2010. "Information, Direct Access to Farmers, and Rural Market Performance in Central India," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(3), pages 22-45, July.
    2. Stigler, George J., 2011. "Economics of Information," Ekonomicheskaya Politika / Economic Policy, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, vol. 5, pages 35-49.
    3. Jenny C. Aker, 2010. "Information from Markets Near and Far: Mobile Phones and Agricultural Markets in Niger," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(3), pages 46-59, July.
    4. Shahidur Rashid, 2004. "Spatial Integration of Maize Markets in Post-liberalised Uganda," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 13(1), pages 102-133, March.
    5. Azzeddine M. Azzam & John R. Schroeter, 1995. "The Tradeoff between Oligopsony Power and Cost Efficiency in Horizontal Consolidation: An Example from Beef Packing," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 77(4), pages 825-836.
    6. Rashid, Shahidur & Gulati, Ashok & Cummings, Ralph Jr., 2008. "From parastatals to private trade: Lessons from Asian agriculture," Issue briefs 50, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    7. Robert Jensen, 2007. "The Digital Provide: Information (Technology), Market Performance, and Welfare in the South Indian Fisheries Sector," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(3), pages 879-924.
    8. Jenny Aker, 2008. "Does Digital Divide or Provide? The Impact of Cell Phones on Grain Markets in Niger," Working Papers 154, Center for Global Development.
    9. Robert T. Jensen, 2010. "Information, efficiency, and welfare in agricultural markets," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 41(s1), pages 203-216, November.
    10. Jonathan Donner & Marcela X. Escobari, 2010. "A review of evidence on mobile use by micro and small enterprises in developing countries," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(5), pages 641-658.
    11. Jenny C. Aker & Isaac M. Mbiti, 2010. "Mobile Phones and Economic Development in Africa," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 24(3), pages 207-232, Summer.
    12. Jakob Svensson & David Yanagizawa, 2009. "Getting Prices Right: The Impact of the Market Information Service in Uganda," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 7(2-3), pages 435-445, 04-05.
    13. Kizito, Andrew M., 2009. "Estimating the Benefits from Improved Market Information," Graduate Research Master's Degree Plan B Papers 48844, Michigan State University, Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kizito, Andrew M. & Donovan, Cynthia & Staatz, John M., 2012. "Impact of Agricultural Market Information Systems Activities on Market Performance in Mozambique: Mozambique Country Report," Food Security International Development Working Papers 169572, Michigan State University, Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics.
    2. repec:ags:mididp:152396 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Perakis, Sonja Melissa, 2012. "“Changing Spatial Maize Price Relationships in West Africa”," 2012 Annual Meeting, August 12-14, 2012, Seattle, Washington 124910, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    4. Maurice, Noemie & Davis, Junior, 2011. "Unravelling the underlying causes of price volatility in world coffee and cocoa commodity markets," MPRA Paper 43813, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 2012.
    5. Seré, Carlos, 2020. "Investing Sustainably in African Livestock Development: Opportunities and Trade-Offs," Working Papers 305186, University of Bonn, Center for Development Research (ZEF).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. repec:ags:mididp:152396 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Kizito, Andrew M. & Donovan, Cynthia & Staatz, John M., 2012. "Impact of Agricultural Market Information Systems Activities on Market Performance in Mozambique: Mozambique Country Report," Food Security International Development Working Papers 169572, Michigan State University, Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics.
    3. Chris Parker & Kamalini Ramdas & Nicos Savva, 2016. "Is IT Enough? Evidence from a Natural Experiment in India’s Agriculture Markets," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(9), pages 2481-2503, September.
    4. Eduardo Nakasone & Maximo Torero, 2016. "A text message away: ICTs as a tool to improve food security," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 47(S1), pages 49-59, November.
    5. Hailemariam Ayalew & Dagim G. Belay, 2020. "The Ethiopian Commodity Exchange and Spatial Price Dispersion: Disentangling Warehouse and Price Information effects," IFRO Working Paper 2020/01, University of Copenhagen, Department of Food and Resource Economics.
    6. Arimoto, Yutaka & Kono, Hisaki & Ralandison, Tsilavo & Sakurai, Takeshi & Takahashi, Kazushi, 2015. "Understanding traders' regional arbitage : the case of rice traders in Antananarivo, Madagascar," IDE Discussion Papers 505, Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization(JETRO).
    7. Ana Dammert & Jose Galdo & Virgilio Galdo, 2015. "Integrating mobile phone technologies into labor-market intermediation: a multi-treatment experimental design," IZA Journal of Labor & Development, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 4(1), pages 1-27, December.
    8. Zant, Wouter, 2024. "Mobile phones and Mozambique farmers: Less asymmetric information and more trader competition?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 180(C).
    9. Robert T. Jensen, 2010. "Information, efficiency, and welfare in agricultural markets," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 41(s1), pages 203-216, November.
    10. Abate, Gashaw T. & Abay, Kibrom A. & Chamberlin, Jordan & Kassim, Yumna & Spielman, David J. & Paul Jr Tabe-Ojong, Martin, 2023. "Digital tools and agricultural market transformation in Africa: Why are they not at scale yet, and what will it take to get there?," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).
    11. Jenny C. Aker & Marcel Fafchamps, 2015. "Mobile Phone Coverage and Producer Markets: Evidence from West Africa," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 29(2), pages 262-292.
    12. Munsaka, Eustensia, 2018. "The use of information sharing systems to address opportunistic behaviour between tomato farmers and brokers in Zambia," Research Theses 334750, Collaborative Masters Program in Agricultural and Applied Economics.
    13. Diether W. Beuermann, 2015. "Information and Communications Technology, Agricultural Profitability and Child Labor in Rural Peru," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(4), pages 988-1005, November.
    14. Shimamoto, Daichi & Yamada, Hiroyuki & Gummert, Martin, 2015. "Mobile phones and market information: Evidence from rural Cambodia," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 135-141.
    15. Anais Maillet, 2015. "Food price volatility and farmers' production decisions under imperfect information," FOODSECURE Technical papers 8, LEI Wageningen UR.
    16. Dammert, Ana C. & Galdo, Jose C. & Galdo, Virgilio, 2014. "Preventing dengue through mobile phones: Evidence from a field experiment in Peru," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 147-161.
    17. Nancy Chau & Hideaki Goto & Ravi Kanbur, 2016. "Middlemen, fair traders, and poverty," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 14(1), pages 81-108, March.
    18. Riera, O. & Minten, B., 2018. "Mobile phones and agricultural market performance in Ethiopia," 2018 Conference, July 28-August 2, 2018, Vancouver, British Columbia 277107, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    19. Giacomo Zanello & Chittur S. Srinivasan & Bhavani Shankar, 2014. "Transaction Costs, Information Technologies, and the Choice of Marketplace among Farmers in Northern Ghana," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(9), pages 1226-1239, September.
    20. Yaw Nyarko, 2017. "Transforming Rural Africa-Economics, Technology and Governance," Journal of African Development, African Finance and Economic Association (AFEA), vol. 19(1), pages 161-167.
    21. Shiyi Chen & Wanlin Liu & Hong Song & Qing Zhang, 2024. "Government‐led e‐commerce expansion project and rural household income: Evidence and mechanisms," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 62(1), pages 150-174, January.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:midasp:108184. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/damsuus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.