Market days are the pulse of rural, economic and social life in many parts of the world and millions of people rely for their daily sustenance on weekly markets. I study the role of this long-standing institution in shaping agglomeration and present-day local trade patterns. I identify a natural experiment in Western Kenya in which market schedules over the past century were set quasi-randomly. I find that market schedule coordination causally and lastingly affected market attendance, driven by cross-attendance from other villages, as well as present-day population and night-time luminosity as a proxy for economic activity.
STEG Project Policy Brief
• Research Theme 0: Data, Measurement, and Conceptual Framing,
Research Theme 3: Agricultural Productivity and Sectoral Gaps,
Research Theme 4: Trade and Spatial Frictions,
Research Theme 5: The Role of the Public Sector
What market day schedules can teach us about economic development
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