Middlemen, Non-Profits, and Poverty

Nancy Chau, Hideaki Goto and Ravi Kanbur

No 55931, Working Papers from Cornell University, Department of Applied Economics and Management

Abstract: In many markets in developing countries, especially in remote areas, middlemen are thought to earn excessive profits. Non-profits come in to counter what is seen as middlemen's market power, and rich country consumers pay a "fair-trade" premium for products marketed by such non-profits. This paper provides answers to the following five questions. How exactly do middlemen and non-profits divide up the market? How do the price mark up and price pass-through differ between middleman and non-profits? What is the impact of non-profits entry on the wellbeing of the poor? Should the government subsidize the entry of non-profits, or the entry of middlemen? Should wealthy consumers in the North pay a premium for fair trade products, or should they support fair trade non-profits directly?

Keywords: Food Security and Poverty; International Development; Productivity Analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41
Date: 2009-08-16
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/55931/files/Cornell_AEM_wp0930.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Middlemen, Non-Profits and Poverty (2009)
Working Paper: Middlemen, Non-Profits, and Poverty (2009)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:cudawp:55931

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.55931

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Cornell University, Department of Applied Economics and Management Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().