Shortening the Path to Productive Investment: Evidence from Input Fairs and Cash Transfers in Malawi
By Shilpa Aggarwal, Dahyeon Jeong, Naresh Kumar, David Park, Jonathan Robinson, Alan Spearot
Journal of Development Economics | September 2024
Journal of Development Economics | September 2024
Citation
Aggarwal, Shilpa., Jeong, Dahyeon., Kumar, Naresh., Park, David., Robinson, Jonathan., Spearot, Alan. (2024). Shortening the Path to Productive Investment: Evidence from Input Fairs and Cash Transfers in Malawi Journal of Development Economics doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2024.103288.
Copyright
Journal of Development Economics, 2024
Share:
Abstract
While cash transfers consistently show large effects on immediate outcomes like consumption, limited access to markets may mute their impact on productive investment. In an experiment in Malawi, we cross-cut cash transfers with an “input fair”, designed to reduce transport costs to access agricultural inputs. Cash alone increases investment by 27%, while the joint provision of cash and the input fair increases investment by about 40%; thus, the incremental effect of the input fair is equivalent to about a 50% increase compared to the effect of cash alone. Input fairs alone were ineffective.
Shilpa Aggarwal is an Associate Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the Indian School of Business (ISB). She is a development economist, whose research aims to explore market linkages in developing countries. For her PhD dissertation, she examined the effects of a road construction programme in India that connected remote rural areas to nearby markets. Her ongoing research is focused on agricultural supply chains in India and East Africa. She also works on issues pertaining to domestic trade, microfinance, and food policy.
Professor Aggarwal holds a PhD from the University of California, Santa Cruz, an MA from the Delhi School of Economics, and a BA from Shri Ram College of Commerce, University of Delhi.
Shilpa Aggarwal