Last week I discussed how mobile phones were being used by people in developing economies. Here is a link to a discussion of another study done on the same topic, in this case in Kerala, India:

… the power the middleman holds over the fishermen due to the monopoly on price information has lessened somewhat. The free flow of information ensures the fishermen get the opportunity to drive a harder bargain than before.

Which sort of circles back to whether or not fishermen or other commodity producers have access to the same information via radio or similar communications technology.

I also would like to learn more about the role that middlemen play in these local markets. The natural tendency is to see them simply as someone taking advantage of producers. I wonder if this is always the case; do they provide value in the form of transportation or distribution?

Going back to the Honduras example, I know that the middlemen had pickup trucks available to take the raw coffee to town where it could move to the next step in the chain. None of the farmers had the equipment to do this, so clearly the middlemen are providing a service, and do have to compete among each other for efficiency. I guess all cases would be different.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 12th, 2008 at 5:00 pm and is filed under Economics, Technology, Telecommunications. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.