Big Fish in Thin Markets: Competing with the Middlemen to Increase Market Access in the Amazon
Middlemen are ubiquitous in supply chains. In developing countries they help bring products from remote communities to end markets but may exert strong market power. We study a cooperative intervention which organizes together poor fishing communities in the Amazon — one of the poorest and most remote regions of the world — to purchase large boats in order to partially bypass middlemen and deliver their fish directly to market. We find that the intervention increases income by 27%, largely through an increase in price received, and also increases consumption. Moreover, the intervention is highly cost effective with the projected stream of income gains easily covering the cost of the investment. Finally, we formalize a model in which the market power of middlemen itself can create a poverty trap, which can be eliminated with cooperative investment.
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Copy CitationViva Ona Bartkus, Wyatt Brooks, Joseph P. Kaboski, and Carolyn E. Pelnik, "Big Fish in Thin Markets: Competing with the Middlemen to Increase Market Access in the Amazon," NBER Working Paper 29221 (2021), https://doi.org/10.3386/w29221.Download Citation
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Non-Technical Summaries
- A community-financed program to procure boats, ice, and fuel enabled impoverished communities to avoid middlemen in trade, boosting...
Published Versions
Viva Ona Bartkus & Wyatt Brooks & Joseph P. Kaboski & Carolyn Pelnik, 2021. "Big fish in thin markets: Competing with the middlemen to increase market access in the Amazon," Journal of Development Economics, . citation courtesy of 
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