As part of the Vilfredo Pareto Research Seminar series, the International Economics Department at the Graduate Institute is pleased to invite you to the public talk Can Market Design Help the World’s Poor? Evidence from a Lab Experiment on Land Trade (joint work with Gharad Bryan, Tom Wilkening, Nitin Yadav) given by Jonathan de Quidt, Professor in Economics at IIES, Stockholm.

Jonathan de Quidt is Assistant Professor at the Institute for International Economic Studies, Stockholm. He received his PhD from the London School of Economics. His research interests lie broadly in behavioral and development economics and combine experimental work and applied theory.

Abstract: Market design has increased efficiency in complex reallocation problems in the developed world. Because reallocation may be necessary for development, there is potential for market design to contribute to reducing poverty. A key constraint is that low levels of literacy and numeracy may preclude the poor from benefiting from complex market designs. To understand the importance of this constraint, we conducted a lab-in-the-field experiment with Kenyan small-holder farmers. Farmers traded land in a hypothetical environment where theory suggests a package auction would thicken markets and reduce exposure risk. Comparing performance in a more complex package auction to a simpler continuous double auction we show that the added complexity increased efficiency, reducing the gap to the first best by around 26%. We find no evidence that the added complexity increased inequality.

The Vilfredo Pareto Research Seminar is our Departmental weekly seminar, featuring external speakers in all areas of economics. The organizer for this academic year is Prof. Julia Cajal-Grossi (julia.cajal@graduateinstitute.ch)