Signed, Sealed, Delivered: Digital Receipts in the Ugandan Dairy Chain
Presented by:
Pedro Magana Saenz
Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Friday, September 12, 2025
12:00 pm-1:30 pm
Taylor-Hibbard Seminar Room (Rm103)
We provide causal evidence that digital receipts—SMS messages reporting milk deliveries—can improve accountability, delivery behavior, and product quality in agricultural markets with limited monitoring and weak enforcement mechanisms. In a randomized experiment with dairy cooperatives in western Uganda, we find that treated farmers, particularly those who self-deliver, are significantly more likely to deliver milk. This increase in delivery activity occurs without a change in average volumes delivered, suggesting a shift along the extensive margin. The intervention also improves milk quality: treated farmers deliver higher-quality (less diluted) milk. Among farmers who rely on transporters, digital receipts increase the likelihood of detecting discrepancies, switching baseline transporters, and reporting lower trust in intermediaries. These results show that the intervention works differently depending on whether information frictions are present: for self-deliverers, who already have full observability over their deliveries, impacts are concentrated on participation, while for transporter users, where observability is limited, impacts are concentrated on detecting discrepancies and moving away from dishonest transporters. By turning unobservable transactions into verifiable digital records, SMS receipts enhance transparency and make intermediary behavior more observable. Overall, our findings show how simple digital tools can reduce information frictions, shift farmer and intermediary behavior, and improve product quality in fragmented agricultural systems.