About consumer electronics

Professor Ali Abdalla Ali — Fri, 18 May 2007 21:57:36 -0400

Dear Friends,We have the same problem in Sudan i.e. of lack of knowledge by small producers of the prices of their products in the cities.I have heard about such te hnology but only now that I came across this interesting web cite. I will be very grateful if you could help me introduce these technologies in Sudan.I hope to hear from soon tho my email above. Prof.Ali Abdalla Ali(Economist) Sudan University of Science and Technology, Khartoum, SUDAN

In Kerala, Giving New Meaning to "Give a Man a Fish...."

Derek Newberry — Fri, 11 May 2007 13:59:04 -0400

The old expression goes "Give a man a fish and you will feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you will feed him for a lifetime." An article from the latest issue of the Economist seems to imply that we could add a BoP twist to update this saying - something like "Give a man a fish and you will feed him for a day. Sell him a cellular phone and you will give him the ability to sustain long-term income by efficiently marketing his fish at the highest price in the location where they are in greatest demand, simultaneously saving resources by ensuring no fish markets get oversaturated."

Or something along those lines, I won't deign to mangle Chinese proverbs any further. The article itself centered around a study conducted by Robert Jensen on Kerala fishermen, who had to constantly deal with distorted pricing because they had no way of knowing in advance where to sell their catches - ie knowing which markets gave the best price, which were already saturated - with a resulting deadweight loss of 5-8%, the amount of fish that would get thrown away on a daily basis.

That is, until cellular technology became widely available. All of a sudden, fishermen were able to call associates while at sea to determine which market they should head to, bringing local consumer prices for fish to a lower equilibrium over time while raising profits for fishers and bringing waste down to virtually zero.

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About consumer electronics

In Kerala, Giving New Meaning to "Give a Man a Fish...."