Research Objectives
The major research objectives are:
- To study market dynamics in the presence of asymmetric information, heterogeneity of small holders, and inadequate provision of institutions and infrastructure. How markets function, what roles different institutions play in supporting market exchange, and how to design, transfer, and maintain these institutions and access to infrastructure.
- Identify which bottlenecks (physical or institutional) impede the attainment of maximum potential for investment in rural infrastructure services.
- The design of strategies to provide institutional arrangements to override the identified bottlenecks through the adequate access to public infrastructure needed to enhance the environment in which private sector activities take place. Specifically, there is a need to address issues concerning how to foster institutional innovations to enhance infrastructure investments.
- Improve knowledge about the impact that complementary investments in rural infrastructure and institutions may have in market development and in reducing poverty.
- Strengthen the capacity of policy makers and researchers in targeted countries to undertake policy research concerning the role of institutions and infrastructure.
Specific to infrastructure the objectives are:
- Estimate the existing complementarities between the different types of public infrastructure and the endowments of private assets (human capital, financial-physical capital or social capital), which are already possessed by rural populations, in order to maximize the impact of public infrastructure investment.
- Identify investment opportunities that generate the largest multiplier effects and that enhance the attraction of public and private investments for the rural sector.
- To increase the private and social profitability of the executed investments by identifying the critical mass required and the appropriate mix of infrastructure and institutions.
With respect to institutions there is still a lot of research to be carried out, but the specific objectives we want to accomplish are:
- To conduct empirically sound research on why and how institutions matter and how these institutions emerge and evolve over time and their linkages with access to infrastructure and market development.
- To understand the underlying market institutions—such as contract farming, vertically integrated schemes, market information systems, commercial rules and laws, commodity exchanges, and producer and trader associations—needed to enhance the environment in which private sector activities take place.
- To understand the complexity and diversity of institutional arrangements for facilitating market exchange, in particular the critical enforcement of property rights and economic coordination of exchange.