Asymmetric Information and Middleman Margins: An Experiment with Indian Potato Farmers
通过随机告知印度西孟加拉邦马铃薯农民批发价格，发现这并未改变平均销售量和价格，但提高了批发价向收购价的传导，说明农民与本地中间商讨价还价时外部选择权的作用。
West Bengal potato farmers cannot directly access wholesale markets and do not knowwholesale prices. Local middlemen earn large margins; pass-through from wholesale to farmgate prices is negligible. When we informed farmers in randomly chosen villages about wholesale prices, average farmgate sales and prices were unaffected, but pass-through to farmgate prices increased. These results can be explained by a model where farmers bargain ex post with village middlemen, with the outside option of selling to middlemen outside the village. They are inconsistent with standard oligopolistic models of pass-through, search frictions, or risk-sharing contracts.