Marketing efficiency for selected crops in semi-arid tropical India

The study reported here analyzes marketing efficiency during 1974-75 in three different regions in India for sorghum, pearl millet, pigeonpea, chickpea, and groundnuts. Two measures of market efficiency are compared: operational efficiency, measured in terms of market costs and marketing margins; and pricing efficiency, measured in terms of correlations among price changes for the same product in separate markets. The markets examined were found to be operationally efficient for all five crops. In all cases the farmer received the largest share of the consumer"s rupee. With regard to pricing correlations, most of the markets examined were integrated well for most crops, with sorghum a notable exception. The authors conclude that neither operational nor pricing efficiency measures are in themselves complete, but if applied together they may complement one another. In this study the two measures tended to agree. A 22-item bibliography is appended.