The development of agricultural commodity exchanges in Africa has become an increasingly popular strategy for addressing some of the ills plaguing African food markets, including poorly developed risk management systems, high transaction costs, and limited price discovery. However, despite substantial support from donors and, in some cases, national governments, commodity exchanges in most African countries are having difficulties getting off the ground. While previous studies (Rashid, Winter-Nelson, and Garcia 2010) highlight the fact that low trade volumes passing through African commodity exchanges limit their development, the question of why exchanges are thinly traded remains poorly understood. Using the Zambian Agricultural Commodity Exchange... |