Determinants of Tanzanian Export Prices

Rollo, Valentina

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: AGRICULTURAL COMMODITIES;    AGRICULTURE;    AUCTION;    AVERAGE PRICE;    BENCHMARK;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-6225
RP-ID  :  WPS6225

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

. This paper uses firm-level data tostudy the pricing-behavior of Tanzanian exporters. Theimportant question of how exporting firms make pricingdecisions has not received significant attention in thetrade literature, which is more focused on factors thatdetermine export flows. The results of the paper show thatthe free on board price of Tanzanian exports isdifferentiated both across exporters -- withinproduct-destination pairs -- and across markets -- withinfirm-product pairs. Moreover, contrasting with existingevidence, price differentiation across destinations seems tobe mainly relevant for homogenous goods. This result couldindicate either that goods classified as homogeneous canpotentially be differentiated by their intrinsic quality(such as coffee), or that firms charge different mark-ups indifferent markets. Although further work is needed toconfirm what leads to price dispersion, allowing for thepossibility that food products can be verticallydifferentiable amplifies the spectrum of existingopportunities for developing countries to exploit productdifferentiation and market niches. The study also discussesthe implications of the empirical findings in light of thepredictions of price and quality competition models, butfinds that the results cannot be explained by a single trademodel of quality or price competition.