Work in Progress
Information Sharing among Smallholder
with Hyo-Duk Shin (manuscript in preparation)
Recent technological advancements have expanded agriculture-related data accessible to small farmers. We examine when smallholder farmers are incentivized to share yield uncertainty information and its sustainability implications. Farmers’ decisions are influenced by market structure and information accuracy, highlighting the need for alignment and economic incentives to ensure sustainable land use.
Sustainable Palm Oil Processing in West Africa
with Casey Maue and Erica Plambeck (manuscript in preparation)
A distinguishing feature of West African palm oil supply chains is that modern export-oriented industrial palm oil processing mills tend to be surrounded by small-scale informal mills that use rudimentary technology to produce palm oil for local consumption. To understand this phenomenon, we develop a spatial model to evaluate the efficiency of various configurations of different types of processing mills. Returns to scale incent the social planner to develop large and efficient industrial mills. However, when the rate of fruit production is seasonal, high costs of transporting fruit to industrial mills creates a niche for small, low-cost, low-productivity firms to increase the aggregate efficiency of the sector by processing otherwise unused fruit. This result highlights the potential limitations of industrial palm oil development in the African context.