Shortening the path to productive investment: Evidence from input fairs and cash transfers in Malawi

Abstract

While cash transfers consistently show large effects on immediate outcomes like consumption, limited access to markets may mute their impact on productive investment. In an experiment in Malawi, we cross-cut cash transfers with an “input fair”, designed to reduce transport costs to access agricultural inputs. Cash alone increases investment by 27%, while the joint provision of cash and the input fair increases investment by about 40%; thus, the incremental effect of the input fair is equivalent to about a 50% increase compared to the effect of cash alone. Input fairs alone were ineffective.