Last updated on September 6, 2015
Since I had a post discussing contract farming and agricultural value chains yesterday, I thought I should also mention this new article (gated; click here for an older, ungated version) by Rocco Macchiavello and Ameet Morjaria published in the latest issue of the American Economic Review, titled “The Value of Relationships: Evidence from a Supply Shock to Kenyan Rose Exports.”
Here is the abstract:
This paper provides evidence on the importance of reputation in the context of the Kenyan rose export sector. A model of reputation and relational contracting is developed and tested. A seller’s reputation is defined by buyer’s beliefs about seller’s reliability. We show that (i) due to lack of enforcement, the volume of trade is constrained by the value of the relationship; (ii) the value of the relationship increases with the age of the relationship; and (iii) during an exogenous negative supply shock deliveries are an inverted-U shaped function of relationship’s age. Models exclusively focusing on enforcement or insurance considerations cannot account for the evidence.