We invite you to a FAIR Seminar with Tillmann von Carnap. Carnap is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Economics, University of Oslo. Prior to joining UiO, he was a postdoctoral scholar at the Center for Food Security and the Environment at Stanford University. His interests are in development economics, economic geography and remote sensing.
Title: Rural marketplaces and local development
Abstract: Marketplaces are an age-old way to connect geographically separated producers and consumers, and they remain widespread in low-income countries. How do these gatherings shape development around them? To address long-standing data gaps, I combine historical sources with novel satellite-based methods to map marketplaces and measure local population density, establishing three stylized facts for Kenya over the last five decades. First, while rural population quadrupled, two thirds of weekly markets operating in 1970 no longer do so today. Second and despite many markets no longer operating, population concentrated on average around markets that were active in 1970. Third, markets further from large cities saw the most population concentration relative to their surroundings. To rationalize these findings and derive policy implications, I extend a model of rural-urban trade with markets as population-independent locations that aggregate otherwise sparse supply and demand and enable scale economies in transportation. The model explains when new markets emerge, why some markets decline, and which complementary policies catalyze markets for local development.