Shortening Supply Chains: Experimental Evidence from Fruit and Vegetable Vendors in Bogota 2016-2018

All neighborhoods in Bogota are classified by the government into one of six socio-economic strata, classified from 1 (poorest) to 6 (richest). Our focus is on poor neighborhoods (strata 1 to 3) in the South-West of Bogota, not immediately adjacent to Corabastos. Agruppa went door-to-door along streets in these neighborhoods in January and February 2016 (see Appendix 2 for a study timeline) to identify stores that sell fruit and vegetables, excluding the few large supermarkets and chain stores. Their aim was to map approximately 2,400 stores. Using larger streets as natural boundaries, these neighborhoods were then divided into 69 blocks, with a median block size of 36 retail shops per block. Six of these blocks were then dropped for safety reasons, leaving 63 blocks. Blocks were formed into matched pairs on the basis of geographic location and number of firms in the block, and then ordered according to the sequence in which Agruppa desired to expand operations. One block within each pair was then randomly assigned to treatment, and the other to control, for a total of 32 treatment blocks and 31 control blocks.

This yielded a sample of 1,620 firms, comprising 852 firms in treatment blocks and 768 firms in control blocks. On average, 69 percent of firms in treatment blocks and 70 percent of firms in control blocks expressed interest in Agruppa, giving us samples of 586 interested firms in treatment blocks, 266 uninterested firms in treatment blocks, 536 interested firms in control blocks, and 232 uninterested firms in control blocks.