Centre for Rural Economy

Cosmos Adjei

Cosmos Adjei

Modelling Self-Enforcing Relational Contract in the Horticultural Supply Chain in Ghana.

Email: C.Adjei2@newcastle.ac.uk

Supervisors: Dr Diogo Souza Monteiro and Dr Michael Wallace

Project overview

Transformation in the global agri-food chain in recent decades has given rise to the need for vertical coordination between producers and buyers.

Increasingly high value supply chains are governed by contractual arrangement between an upstream agricultural producers and a downstream buyer, which specifies each party’s obligation for the production and marketing of the product.

Agricultural supply chain contracts are, however, vulnerable to reneging, especially in situations where parties are unable to specify all details of the agreement in a contingent court-enforceable contract or where public enforcement institutions are less developed. This problem is common in developing country settings. The objective of this study, therefore, is to develop a model of self-enforcing relational contract for the horticultural supply chain in Ghana and empirically test the model using data generated through repeated game experiment with vegetable farmers and exporters in Ghana.