“From Bilateral Trade to Centralized Markets: A Search Model for Commodity Exchanges in Africa,” with Pellegrina, H. S., (2021).
Several African countries have recently centralized their agricultural markets by launching a commodity exchange. What will be the impact of such a move? Who will be the winners and the losers? We develop a simple search model to study the impact of introducing a commodity exchange in a village economy where traders and farmers exchange on a bilateral basis. We study the efficiency gains from moving from the status quo to a trading regime where farmers have the option of selling their produce to a commodity exchange. We describe how the gains from trade are distributed between farmers, traders and the commodity exchange itself. We show that a dual economy where farmers sell both to the bilateral and the commodity exchange can exist in equilibrium, and that forcing all farmers to sell into the commodity exchange can make some farmers worse off.
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“Price Information, Inter-Village Networks, and 'Bargaining Spillovers': Experimental Evidence from Ghana,” with Hildebrandt, N., Romagnoli, G., and Soldani, E., (2020).
Through a randomized experiment and detailed data on communications among farmers, we identify the impact of text-messages-based commodity price information on rural farmers’ revenues. The intervention affected prices received by farmers in two ways: (1) a long-lasting increase (9%) for treated farmers, and (2) substantial indirect benefits for certain control group farmers, which cannot be explained by classical informational spillovers. We discuss a novel mechanism of bargaining spillovers which can explain such positive externalities, even in the absence of information sharing between the treatment and control groups. Our results highlight the importance of accounting for longer-run spillovers and the potential of ICT interventions in emerging markets.
Keren Neza, Yaw Nyarko, Angela Orozco. “Digital Trading and Market Platforms: Ghana Case Study” in Madon T., Anderson R.J., Casaburi L., Lee K., Rezaee A., Gadgil A.J. (eds.), An Introduction to Development Engineering, Springer, 2021.
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Chakraborty, S., Jabbar, Z., Subramanian, L., and Nyarko, Y., (2016). Satellite Image Analytics, Land Change and Food Security. ACM SIGKDD Workshop on Data Science for Food, Energy and Water (DSFEW), Co-located with KDD 2016, San Francisco, USA.
In this paper, we present the design of a satellite image analytics engine that we use to perform a detailed analysis of changes in agricultural land patterns over a 13-year time period (2000-2012) in West Bengal, India, traditionally considered one of the most fertile areas in the world.
Nyarko, Y. (2018). Review of “The Economy of Ghana Sixty Years after Independence.” edited by Ernest Aryeetey and Ravi Kanbur, American Economic Association Journal of Economic Literature, 56(2), 697-701.
An independent central bank has the ability to set monetary policy free of political influence…
Nyarko, Y. (2017). Transforming Rural Africa - Economics, Technology and Governance. Journal of African Development, 19(1), 160-167.
AFEA/ASSA Luncheon Speech
Arezki, R., El Aynaoui, K., Nyarko, Y., & Teal, F. (2016). Food price Volatility and its Consequences: Introduction. Special Issue, Oxford Economics Papers, 68(3), 655-664.
Commodity prices are in the news. Oil prices have dropped 65% since June 2014…
Nyarko, Y. (2016). Rural Agricultural Markets: A Case Study in Ghana. Working paper prepared for the International Growth Centre (London School of Economics).
In this report we describe the start of a pilot baseline study of the soon to be established Ghana commodity exchange.
Nyarko, Y. (2016). Commodity Exchanges in Africa: Transforming African Agriculture and Finance (Policy Brief). International Growth Center (London School of Economics).
The Ghana government has recently decided to establish a commodities exchange and warehouse receipt system to improve the welfare of farmers.
5. Minten, B., Tamru, S., Kuma, T., & Nyarko, Y. (2014). Structure and Performance of Ethiopia’s Coffee Export Sector. Intl Food Policy Res Inst., (66).
We study the structure and performance of the coffee export sector in Ethiopia, Africa's most important coffee producer, over the period 2003 to 2013.
Chakraborty, S., Tong, T., Chen, J., Aman, A., Mufti, T., Nyarko, Y., & Subramanian, L. (2013). Experiences in Designing a Mobile GIS Mapping Tool for Rural Farmers in Ghana. Proceedings of the 4th Annual Symposium on Computing for Development, ACM, p. 28.
The task of balancing problems associated with population growth and food production has often been impaired by a lack of accurate information on food supply availability in any given region or time.
Nyarko, Y. (2010). The United Arab Emirates: Some Lessons in Economic Development, Working Paper (No. 2010/11). World Institute for Development Economics Research. Republished in Achieving Development Success: Strategies and Lessons from the Developing World, edited by Augustin K. Fosu, Oxford University Press, 2013.
Oil was discovered in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) just 50 years ago. During that time, UAE has ben able to transform itself into a rapidly modernizing country, which is fast becoming a major economic hub and a key player on the international economic landscape.
Melitsko, S., & Nyarko, Y. (2010). Africa and the Arab Gulf: A New Economic and Political Alliance? Journal of African Development, 12(1), 10-19.
Does the relationship between the Arab Gulf and Africa hold the promise of greatly enhanced and mutually beneficial trade and investment?