Document Type

Article

Journal/Book Title/Conference

Economics Research Institute Study Paper

Volume

95

Issue

5

Publisher

Utah State University Department of Economics

Publication Date

1995

Rights

Copyright for this work is held by the author. Transmission or reproduction of materials protected by copyright beyond that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of the copyright owners. Works not in the public domain cannot be commercially exploited without permission of the copyright owner. Responsibility for any use rests exclusively with the user. For more information contact the Institutional Repository Librarian at digitalcommons@usu.edu.

First Page

1

Last Page

25

Abstract

The geography of agricultural marketing has important implications for the stochastic distribution of agricultural commodity prices. This paper proposes that objective food price risk differs between rural and urban areas of infrastructure-poor economies characterized by spatially concentrated patterns of foodgrains storage. This difference implies an urban bias having adverse welfare effects for peasants who seasonally switch between net food seller and net food buyer positions. Empirical analysis of rice price data from Madagascar suggests that price variability and skewness indeed differ between rural and urban areas in ways that adversely influence the relative welfare of rural peasants.

Download

Share

COinS