Work In Progress

Here are three papers that I am working on. Two are based on fieldwork in Chiapas with Chris Boyd and Grant Storer supported by the Center for International Food and Agriculture Policy at the University of Minnesota. The third is my Second Year Paper. Here is my research statement.

Unpacking Side-Selling: Experimental Evidence from Rural Mexico

Stephen Pitts, Chris M. Boyd, and Grant X. Storer
December 3, 2024.
R&R at Agricultural Economics.

Abstract

With the rise of market-led development, marketing cooperatives have emerged that offer smallholder producers a guaranteed minimum price for their cash crops. Their existence is threatened when members side-sell a part of their harvest to outside buyers. We conduct a lab-in-the-field experiment with indigenous coffee producers in southern Mexico to examine the effect of four factors in the marketing decision: additional income, the presence of microcredit and/or technical assistance, average outside buyer price, and harvest quantity. Our results show that participants allocate on average 82% of their harvest to the certain-price buyer. Changes in harvest quantity and outside-buyer price have minimal effects. The offer of complementary services has a null effect. Moreover, 21% of the participants always allocate their entire harvest to the certain-price buyer. Extra income increases this probability by 11%. Subgroup analysis reveals that this effect is limited to existing cooperative members.

Draft: December 3, 2024

Sweet and Timely Insurance: The Role of Honey in Reducing Coffee Producer Food Insecurity Exposure in Mexico

Grant X. Storer, Stephen Pitts, Chris M. Boyd, Jesse Anttila-Hughes
Under review.

Abstract

Smallholder coffee producers face a combination of pre- and post-harvest risk factors that leaves them particularly vulnerable to food insecurity. A popular form of on-farm diversification is honey production through beekeeping, that has both nutritional and commercial value. This study investigates the role of honey production as means of food security management due to the heightened pollinating activity during the coffee flowering stage that follows the annual coffee harvest provides an additional non-contemporaneous source of income. Using primary data collected in coffee-producing regions of Chiapas, Mexico, I find that during the honey harvest months, which occurs during the early stage of the lean season, beekeeping coffee producers are less exposed to food insecurity over coffee producers who don’t diversify into honey.

Draft: July 18, 2024

Where You Go Depends on Who You Know: Social Networks as Determinants of Mexican Internal Migration

Stephen Pitts
6 Sep 2022

Abstract

Recent qualitative evidence suggests that social networks play an important role in potential migrants’ decisions to migrate and their choice of destination. Yet even the latest literature employing microeconomics migration models with social networks often only estimates these models on small household panel data sets. In this paper, I use the Mexican population census to estimate a structural gravity model with social networks on internal migration flows from origin municipalities to destination states over three recent five-year periods at the intensive and extensive margin. To proxy for the social networks, I use internal migrant flows along the same corridor in a previous time period. My results show that social networks affect migration flows. At the extensive margin, a 1% increase in the size of the social network increases by 5%, 12%, and 13% the likelihood of a migration corridor; at the intensive margin, the equivalent social network elasticities are 19%, 30%, and 32%. I identify the effects using origin and destination characteristics as well as the presence of a migrant flow in 1960 to control for other factors that could drive migration along these corridors. These results contribute to both microeconomic and macroeconomic analysis of the determinants of migration.

Draft: Sep 2022