Type: Seminar

Selling Low and Buying High: An Arbitrage Puzzle in Kenyan Villages

Speaker

Lauren Falcao Bergquist, University of Chicago

Date & time

Nov 30, 2017, 4:00-5:30 pm EST

Large and regular seasonal price fluctuations in local grain markets appear to offer African farmers substantial inter-temporal arbitrage opportunities, but these opportunities remain largely unexploited: small-scale farmers are commonly observed to "sell low and buy high" rather than the reverse. In a field experiment in Kenya, we show that credit market imperfections limit farmers' abilities to move grain inter-temporally.

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