Achieving Scale Collectively

General Equilibrium Effects of Cash Transfers: Experimental Evidence from Kenya

“…While suggestive, this interpretation of the supply side response to a demand shock is consistent with other recent findings. In Uganda, Bassi et al (2019) find that employees in on-demand manufacturing (e.g., welding, furniture-making) spend about 25% of time "waiting for customers" or "eating and resting." More broadly, it relates to the old idea in development economics that it might be possible to expand production without notable price inflation due to the availability of slack capacity.…”

“…Contracting frictions and institutions may also affect local market structure and capacity. For instance, Bassi et al (2019) document a pattern of small industrial clusters in neighboring Uganda, in which a dozen small carpentry firms producing nearly identical products may co-exist in the same area. Each of these separately owned firms has one or at most a few employees, and they are characterized by the slack labor capacity noted above.…”

Land Rental Markets: Experimental Evidence from Kenya

“…2 Recent papers on rental markets of other factors include Bassi et al (2021), which shows that rental market interactions allow small firms in Uganda to increase their effective scale and mechanize production, and Caunedo and Kala (2021), which presents the results of an experiment that subsidizes access to agricultural rental equipment markets in India.…”