Quality upgrading and quality incentives in Uganda’s coffee sector
This project investigates how market structure influences incentives for quality improvement in Uganda’s coffee supply chain through a randomised control trial. By varying quality premiums offered to traders, it examines how these incentives are transmitted to farmers and how they affect investment in coffee quality.
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- This project studies how market structure affects incentives for quality upgrading along developing country supply chains via a field experiment in the coffee sector in Uganda.
- Partnering with a leading coffee procurement, processing, and marketing company in Uganda, the research team conducts a randomised control trial (RCT) aimed at generating exogenous variation in quality premiums at different points in the value chain.
- As part of the experiment, Uganda’s largest exporter of coffee has offered randomly-selected traders (for example, intermediaries) different prices for high-quality coffee beans and for low-quality coffee beans.
- This generates exogenous variation in quality premiums offered to traders.
- The project examines how much of the quality premiums will get passed through to farmers and how the premiums will affect the traders and farmers' incentives to invest in quality.