Understanding traders' regional arbitage: the case of rice traders in Antananarivo, Madagascar

Yutaka Arimoto, Hisaki Kono, Tsilavo Ralandison, Sakurai Takeshi and Kazushi Takahashi

No 505, IDE Discussion Papers from Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization(JETRO)

Abstract: Many studies find that agricultural markets in developing countries are poorly integrated spatially. Traders' regional arbitrage plays a key role in integrating markets across space. We investigate the performance of regional arbitrage and the associated obstacles for rice traders in Antananarivo, Madagascar. On the basis of a trader-level biweekly survey spanning 2012–2013, we find that traders are not fully exploiting the regional arbitrage opportunities: most of them fail to purchase from the cheapest district and are paying higher prices than those in the cheapest district. One apparent obstacle is obtaining price information from many different regions. To reduce search costs, we provided regional price information via SMS to randomly selected traders, but found that this had a null-effect on improving arbitrage performance. Traders tend to concentrate on trading with a few fixed districts, even if they are informed about cheaper prices in other new districts, because they worry about quality uncertainty and the trustworthiness of new partners. These findings suggest that not only transmission of price information but also issues related to produce quality and matching prevent the performance of arbitrage and market integration.

Keywords: Madagascar; Rice; Market; Retail trade; Primary commodities; Regional arbitrage; Market integration; Information friction; Price information; Search (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L81 O13 Q13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-03-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published in IDE Discussion Paper = IDE Discussion Paper, No. 505. 2015-03-01

Downloads: (external link)
https://ir.ide.go.jp/record/37672/files/IDP000505_001.pdf First version, 2015 (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:jet:dpaper:dpaper505

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
Publication Office, IDE 3-2-2 Wakaba, Mihama-ku, Chiba-shi, Chiba 261-8545 JAPAN
http://www.ide.go.jp/English/Publish/Order

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IDE Discussion Papers from Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization(JETRO) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michitaka Imamitsu ().