Danielle Handel

Department: Economics

Faculty Mentor: Katherine Casey, Professor of Political Economy, GSB

Improving artisanal gold markets

Across Sub-Saharan Africa, millions of people make their living mining gold by hand — often in dangerous, remote conditions with few alternative sources of income. Yet the prices these miners receive for their gold are systematically far below what gold actually fetches on world markets, because a small number of private traders control the buying and exploit miners' limited access to information about what their gold is actually worth. Zambia's government recently responded by authorizing a network of public gold buying centers designed to introduce competition and give miners a fairer price. Danielle will partner with Zambia's Ministry of Mines and Mineral Development to study whether and how these centers work — and what design choices make them most effective — generating evidence that can inform policy in broader commodity markets where smallholder producers face concentrated buyer power.