Without enforced standards or reliable third‐party verification, food safety threats such as pesticide residues and aflatoxin contamination are generally unobservable or only partially observable to both buyers and sellers, especially of staple foods in rural maize markets in sub‐Saharan Africa. As a result, sellers have more information about food quality than do buyers. Such information asymmetries can impede market development and undermine human health. We study farm household behaviour in the context of imperfect food safety information. We pool observations obtained from 707 food storage containers maintained by 309 farm households in Benin, surveyed following the maize harvests of 2011/2012 and 2013/2014. Our results indicate that when a household perceives a food safety risk associated with application of insecticides, on average it is 33 percentage points less likely to apply insecticides to maize it intends to consume than it is to maize it intends to sell. These individuals are also more likely to sell maize than households without food safety concerns. Results highlight the potential value of improved storage technologies and quality control to promote market transactions and reduce hidden health risks.

中文翻译：

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农村玉米市场的食品安全和不良选择

如果没有强制性的标准或可靠的第三方验证，买主和卖主通常都无法观察到或仅部分观察到农药残留和黄曲霉毒素污染等食品安全威胁，尤其是撒哈拉以南非洲农村玉米市场中的主食。结果，卖方比买方拥有更多有关食品质量的信息。这种信息不对称会阻碍市场发展并损害人类健康。我们在食品安全信息不完善的情况下研究了农户的行为。我们汇总了从贝宁309个农户维护的707个食品储藏容器中获得的观测值，这些观测值是在2011/2012年和2013/2014年玉米收获后进行调查的。我们的结果表明，当一个家庭意识到与使用杀虫剂有关的食品安全风险时，与打算出售的玉米相比，将杀虫剂用于玉米的可能性平均降低了33个百分点。与没有食品安全问题的家庭相比，这些人也更有可能出售玉米。结果强调了改进的存储技术和质量控制对促进市场交易并减少潜在的健康风险的潜在价值。