Time: 13:00-15:00 (GMT), Wednesday, 10 February 2021
Presenter: Professor Yaw Nyarko, New York University (NYU)
Chair: Professor Victor Murinde, SOAS University of London
Online venue: Click here to join the meeting on Microsoft Teams (For any inquiry about how to join the online seminar, please contact Dr Meng Xie: xm1@soas.ac.uk)

Abstract
Several African countries have recently centralized their agricultural markets by launching a commodity exchange. What would 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.

Keywords: Agriculture, Bilateral Exchange, Walrasian Markets
JEL: J6, O2, Q1, F13

Authors: Yaw Nyarko  Heitor S. Pellegrina

Presenter

Professor Yaw Nyarko

Yaw Nyarko is Professor of Economics at New York University (NYU) and the Director of NYU Africa House, the Center for Technology and Economic Development (CTED), and Co-Director of the Development Research Institute (DRI). As Co-Director of DRI, he was awarded the 2009 BBVA Frontiers in Knowledge Award on Economic Development Cooperation. As one of the most highly ranked African academic economists in the world, his research interests focus on the areas of economic development, theoretical economics, models of human capital as engines of economic growth, brain drain and skills acquisition, labor economics, and migration. His current research focuses on technology and economic development, commodities exchanges and markets in Africa, and determinants and returns of labor migration from South Asia in the UAE, as well as the impacts of various policy measures on the mobility of labor within the UAE.

He is the former Chair of the Econometric Society Africa Regional Standing Committee. He has served as a consultant to organizations including the African Development Bank, the World Bank, the United Nations, and the Social Science Research Council. As the former Vice Provost of NYU, he managed a portfolio that included the oversight and establishment of campuses in Abu Dhabi, Accra, and Shanghai. Yaw Nyarko received his B.A. from the University of Ghana and a M.A. and Ph.D. in Economics from Cornell University.