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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Cartels In An "Nth-Best" World: The Wholesale Foodstuff Trade In Ibadan, Nigeria, Harlan M. Smith Ii, Margaret E. Luttrell
Cartels In An "Nth-Best" World: The Wholesale Foodstuff Trade In Ibadan, Nigeria, Harlan M. Smith Ii, Margaret E. Luttrell
Harlan M. Smith
The purpose of this paper is to develop an understanding of the economic functions and associated welfare implications of the cooperative associations that dominate the wholesale trade in two staple foods. Questionnaire responses lead to several conclusions. Individual traders face incomplete markets, imperfect information, and little government-provided institutional and physical infrastructure. The associations are sophisticated "Coase-like" responses to this market environment: they focus on reducing their members' transaction costs, and hence the marginal private costs of trading. Thus it is likely that these associations enhance efficiency. We conclude with a critique of current government policy with respect to this trade.
A Strategy For Rural Financial Market Reform: Applying The Financial Systems Approach In Ghana, Harlan M. Smith Ii, Abor Yeboah
A Strategy For Rural Financial Market Reform: Applying The Financial Systems Approach In Ghana, Harlan M. Smith Ii, Abor Yeboah
Harlan M. Smith
We construct, using methods advocated in one strand of the Financial Systems Approach literature, a reform-and-renewal program for one of Ghana’s struggling Rural Banks--the Kaaseman Rural Bank. Questionnaire results, local informal financial practices, recent institutional innovations in Ghanaian finance, the experiences of successful “Nontraditional” rural finance institutions in developing countries, and the operating structure of the Rural Bank program indicate that this bank can implement a group-lending scheme that will reduce significantly its transaction costs and those of its customers. We thus demonstrate how the Financial Systems Approach can be employed to promote sustainable rural financial intermediation in a specific …