Is the local wheat market a ‘market for lemons’? Certifying the supply of individual wheat farmers in Ethiopia
在埃塞俄比亚引入小麦分级认证商店，通过拍卖实验发现农户对认证的支付意愿与小麦质量正相关，且提前通知认证机会能提升质量，但总支付意愿不足以覆盖运营成本。
Abstract Bulking and mixing of smallholder supply dilutes incentives to supply high quality. We introduce wheat ‘grading and certification shops’ in Ethiopia and use an auction design to gauge willingness-to-pay (WTP) for certification. Bids correlate positively with wheat quality, and ex ante notification of the opportunity of certification improves wheat quality. These findings suggest that local wheat markets resemble a ‘market for lemons’, crippled by asymmetric information. However, aggregate WTP for grading and certification services does not re-coup the sum of fixed, flow and variable costs associated with running a single certification shop.