We quantify the effect of market disruptions due to COVID-19 on the lives of households in rural areas of Liberia and Malawi, utilizing panel data from phone surveys that were implemented as part of a randomized cash transfer experiment. The surveys began collection several months before the pandemic and have continued throughout it. The household survey included a consistent set of internationally accepted and validated questions on food security (the household dietary diversity score, the household hunger scale, and the food consumption score). In both countries, market activity was severely disrupted and we observe large declines in income among market vendors, but we find no evidence of declines in food security for households in the short run. Even though we observe no adverse effects of the lockdowns on food security among the control group, cash transfers improved dietary quality and quantity over the low levels observed at baseline.

In this paper, we quantify market access in rural Tanzania, and the extent to which it constrains agricultural productivity. We collect granular data on farmer input and sales decisions, input and output prices, and travel costs in all 1,183 villages in two regions of Tanzania. We find that a village in the 90th percentile of the travel-cost adjusted price distribution faces input and output prices 40-55% less favorable than a village at the 10th percentile. In reduced form, an additional standard deviation of travel time is associated with 20-25% lower input adoption and output sales. We develop and quantify a spatial model of input adoption and conservatively estimate that farmers behave as if they face travel costs of 6% ad-valorem per kilometer of travel, which is equivalent to 40% when traveling to the closest retailer. Holding exogenous local factors fixed, we estimate that reducing travel costs by 50% (approximately the effect of paving rural roads) doubles adoption and reduces the adoption-remoteness gradient by 18%.

We are extremely grateful to all the enumerators in both countries, though there are too many to list individually. We thank seminar participants at IFPRI, UCSC and the IPA/GPRL Methods and Measurement Conference for helpful comments. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of USAID, the World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

We collect data on prices, travel costs and farmer decisions to quantify market access for chemical fertilizer and its impact on agricultural productivity in 1,180 villages in Northern Tanzania. Villages at the bottom of the travel cost-adjusted input price distribution face 40-55% less favorable prices than those at the top. A standard deviation increase in village-level remoteness is associated with 20-25% lower input adoption. A spatial model of input adoption conservatively estimates that total trade costs are 4X pecuniary travel costs. Counterfactuals suggest that halving travel costs would more than double adoption and reduce the adoption-remoteness gradient by 63%.

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