Maziko Cash Transfer Trial Market Formation

How do social protection programs, specifically “cash plus” interventions that combine unconditional cash transfers with nutritional training, impact market formation, prices, and product availability in general equilibrium? This research project intends to study supply-side reactions in the form of market location, timing, and prices to the combination of an exogenous increase in expenditures (unconditional cash transfers) and demand shifters (nutrition programming). This grant will support travel to Malawi and exploratory qualitative work during the midline survey of the “Maziko” cash transfer experiment to explore the feasibility of conducting an economic census or enterprise survey concurrent with the program’s endline. The “Maziko” cash transfer trial is a project that began in June 2021 in the Balaka and Ntcheu districts of Malawi. Implemented by GiveDirectly and Save the Children, the trial randomly assigned 160 villages to either a control arm, a nutritional behavior change intervention arm, or one of two “cash plus” arms. In these “cash plus” arms, households receive a monthly cash transfer of $20 or $35 and nutritional programming related to micronutrient-dense food items.