IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/qjecon/v134y2019i2p895-951..html

Strategic Default in the International Coffee Market

Author

Listed:
  • Arthur Blouin
  • Rocco Macchiavello

Abstract

This article studies strategic default on forward sale contracts in the international coffee market. To test for strategic default, we construct contract-specific measures of unanticipated changes in market conditions by comparing spot prices at maturity with the relevant futures prices at the contracting date. Unanticipated rises in market prices increase defaults on fixed-price contracts but not on price-indexed ones. We isolate strategic default by focusing on unanticipated rises at the time of delivery after production decisions are sunk and suppliers have been paid. Estimates suggest that roughly half of the observed defaults are strategic. We model how strategic default introduces a trade-off between insurance and counterparty risk: relative to indexed contracts, fixed-price contracts insure against price swings but create incentives to default when market conditions change. A model calibration suggests that the possibility of strategic default causes 15.8% average losses in output, significant dispersion in the marginal product of capital, and sizable negative externalities on supplying farmers.

Suggested Citation

  • Arthur Blouin & Rocco Macchiavello, 2019. "Strategic Default in the International Coffee Market," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 134(2), pages 895-951.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:qjecon:v:134:y:2019:i:2:p:895-951.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/qje/qjz004
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Nicholas Ryan, 2020. "Holding Up Green Energy," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 2294, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    2. Christopher Ksoll & Rocco Macchiavello & Ameet Morjaria, 2023. "Electoral Violence and Supply Chain Disruptions in Kenya's Floriculture Industry," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 105(6), pages 1335-1351, November.
    3. Cajal-Grossi, Julia & Macchiavello, Rocco & Noguera, Guillermo, 2019. "International buyers' sourcing and suppliers' markups in Bangladeshi garments," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 102612, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    4. Rocco Macchiavello & Ameet Morjaria, 2021. "Competition and Relational Contracts in the Rwanda Coffee Chain," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 136(2), pages 1089-1143.
    5. Casaburi, Lorenzo & ,, 2018. "Time vs. State in Insurance: Experimental Evidence from Contract Farming in Kenya," CEPR Discussion Papers 12896, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    6. Juan Camilo Domínguez & Jonathan Eaton & Marcela Eslava & James Tybout, 2023. "Search and learning in export markets: Evidence from interviews with Colombian exporters," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(3), pages 1093-1116, August.
    7. Cristian Camilo Ordoñez & Mario Muñoz Organero & Gustavo Ramirez-Gonzalez & Juan Carlos Corrales, 2024. "Smart Contracts as a Tool to Support the Challenges of Buying and Selling Coffee Futures Contracts in Colombia," Agriculture, MDPI, vol. 14(6), pages 1-20, May.
    8. Albuquerque Sant'Anna, André & Costa, Lucas, 2021. "Environmental regulation and bail outs under weak state capacity: Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon11The authors gratefully acknowledge Antonio Ambrózio, Juliano Assunção, Arthur Bragança, Filipe ," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 186(C).
    9. Macchiavello, Rocco & Morjaria, Ameet, 2022. "Acquisitions, Management, and Efficiency in Rwanda's Coffee Industry," CEPR Discussion Papers 17434, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    10. Rocco Macchiavello & Ameet Morjaria, 2023. "Relational Contracts: Recent Empirical Advancements and Open Questions," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 179(3-4), pages 673-700.
    11. Macchiavello, Rocco & Casaburi, Lorenzo, 2015. "Firm and Market Response to Saving Constraints: Evidence from the Kenyan Dairy Industry," CEPR Discussion Papers 10952, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    12. Bladimir Carrillo, 2020. "Present Bias and Underinvestment in Education? Long-Run Effects of Childhood Exposure to Booms in Colombia," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 38(4), pages 1127-1265.
    13. Cajal-Grossi, Julia & Del Prete, Davide & Macchiavello, Rocco, 2023. "Supply chain disruptions and sourcing strategies," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    14. M. Ali Choudhary & Anil K. Jain, 2022. "Credit access and relational contracts: An experiment testing informational and contractual frictions for Pakistani farmers," International Finance Discussion Papers 2022, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    15. Sumit Agarwal & Slava Mikhed & Barry Scholnick & Man Zhang, 2022. "Reducing Strategic Default in a Financial Crisis," Working Papers 21-36, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    16. Macchiavello, Rocco & Morjaria, Ameet, 2022. "Empirical approaches to trust and relational contracts," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    17. Arouna, Aminou & Michler, Jeffrey D. & Lokossou, Jourdain C., 2021. "Contract farming and rural transformation: Evidence from a field experiment in Benin," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 151(C).
    18. Davidson Heath & Mark Mitchell, 2023. "Market Returns and Interim Risk in Mergers," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(1), pages 617-635, January.
    19. Mohamed Abouaziza, . "Farmer constraints and relational contracts: evidence from agricultural value chains in East Africa," Economics PhD Theses, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School, number 0122, December.
    20. André Albuquerque Sant’Anna & Lucas Costa, 2019. "Bailing out environmental liabilities: moral hazard and deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon," Documentos de Trabajo 17435, The Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association (LACEA).
    21. Alexandros Karakostas & Diogo M. De Souza Monteiro & Cosmos Adjei, 2025. "Double Moral Hazard in Contract Farming: An Experimental Analysis," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 76(3), pages 640-650, September.
    22. Dimuthu Ratnadiwakara, 2021. "Collateral Value and Strategic Default: Evidence from Auto Loans," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 59(3), pages 209-240, June.
    23. Macchiavello, Rocco & Miquel-Florensa, Josepa, 2019. "Buyer-Driven Upgrading in GVCs: The Sustainable Quality Program in Colombia," CEPR Discussion Papers 13935, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    24. Lorenzo Casaburi & Rocco Macchiavello, 2019. "Demand and Supply of Infrequent Payments as a Commitment Device: Evidence from Kenya," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(2), pages 523-555, February.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D22 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Empirical Analysis
    • L14 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Transactional Relationships; Contracts and Reputation
    • G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure; Value of Firms; Goodwill
    • O16 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Financial Markets; Saving and Capital Investment; Corporate Finance and Governance

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:qjecon:v:134:y:2019:i:2:p:895-951.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/qje .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.