Agriculture production, especially as done by small scale households, is an enterprise
fraught with high transaction costs. The remoteness of production and the low value
to weight ratios of both outputs and inputs can cause large price bands within which
neither buying nor selling is beneficial to the household and a state of autarky exists.
Increasing market participation by agricultural households has potential to help the individual
households as well as the society as a whole. Easing the burden of transportation
is one possible avenue to spur market participation. This paper estimates the impact
of an expansion of public infrastructure on rural agricultural households’ decision to sell
to the market. Specifically, we ask whether increased access to a reliable road network
increases the likelihood of participating in the output market. To do this we use panel
data from Uganda spanning from 2009 to 2012 which coincides with a large investment
in Ugandan roads. We employ a difference-in-difference model to examine the impact of
gaining access to an all-season road as well as test the strength of various distances for
claiming road access.