by Bruce Wydick
CHAPTER 23
The experiment and data collection described in chapter 23 were carried out by graduate students at the University of San Francisco. Data from the experiment presented in the story is actual data.
CHAPTER 27
The story of the massacre was taken from personal interviews with rural Guatemalans who suffered through the genocides of the early 19809s and a compilation of accounts from a number of books that recount specific episodes of this tragic time, including Ricardo Falla (1994), Massacres in the Jungle: Ixcán, Guatemala, 1975–1982, trans. Julia Howland (Boulder: Westview Press); Gonzalo Sichar Moreno (2000), Masacares en Guatemala: Los Gritos de un Pueblo Entero (Guatemala: GAM); and Beatriz Mans (2004), Paradise in Ashes: A Guatemalan Journey of Courage, Terror, and Hope (Berkeley: University of California Press).
CHAPTER 29
The research on child labor that Alex refers to is Kaushik Basu (1998), “Child Labor: Cause, Consequence, and Cure,” Journal of Economic Literature 38: 1083–119. For an excellent study on the unintended consequences of child labor pooling, see Prachant Bharadwaj, Leah Lakdawala, and Nicholas Li (2014), “Perverse Consequences of Well-Intentioned Regulation: Evidence from India’s Child Labor Ban” (working paper, University of California at San Diego).
CHAPTER 30
A key study on the shift in income shares from producers to consumers is John Talbot (1997), “Where Does Your Coffee Dollar Go? The Division of Income and Surplus along the Coffee Commodity Chain,” Studies in Comparative International Development 32 (1). Consumer trends for coffee consumption can be found at the National Coffee Association USA website at www.ncausa.org.
The fair trade coffee impact study described in chapter 30 is Alain de Janvry, Elizabeth Sadoulet, and Craig McInstosh (2010), “Fair Trade and Free Entry: The Dissipation of Producer Benefits in a Disequilibrium Market” (working paper, University of California at Berkeley, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, with grand funding through BASIS-USAID). Other data is taken from Bando and de los Rios (2007).
Other studies have also examined problems of over certification, including Margaret Levi and April Linton (2003), “Fair Trade: A Cup at a Time?” Politics and Society 31: 407–32, as well as the problem of low transfers to growers, for example, Marc Sidwell (2008), “Unfair Trade” (London: Adam Smith Institute). Other studies, such as Utting-Charmorro (2005), “Does Fair Trade Make a Difference? The Case of Small Coffee Producers in Nicaragua,” Development in Practice 15: 584–99, claim positive benefits from fair trade to coffee growers. Yet these and some other more recent studies suffer from statistical identification problems that render them unable to identify the causal impacts of fair and some other more recent trade coffee. Another recent study using rigorous impact identification is Raluca Dragusanu and Nathan Nunn (2014), “The Impacts from Fair Trade Certification: Evidence from Coffee Producers in Costa Rica,” (working paper, Harvard University), which finds small positive impacts on the most skilled producers but none for the majority of fair trade coffee producers in the study.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I WOULD LIKE TO ACKNOWLEDGE MY FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES at the University of California at Berkeley, Alain de Janvry and Betty Sadoulet, as well as Craig McIntosh at the University of California at San Diego, for their outstanding research on the fair trade coffee project. All of us involved in the project would like to thank Rosangela Bando, Gonzalo de los Rios, Owen Ozier, Seth Morgan, Josh Schellenberg, Jerlin Hurtado, and Victoria Fontillas for their outstanding fieldwork in Guatemala, and Elizabeth Katz at the University of San Francisco, who organized and supervised much of this fieldwork. Rosangela and Gonzalo carried out the careful initial work that investigated the free trade and fair trade coffee value chains on which this story is based. For outstanding collaboration in survey work related to this book, I owe my deep gratitude to master’s students at the University of San Francisco, especially Ben Buttorff, Sire Diedhiou, Eric Fischer, Quinn Keefer, Kate Hereford, Frank Hoffman, Patrick Madigan, Ram Rajbanshi, Laine Rutledge, Kittiyaratch Thanakornmonkkonchai, Raj Thiagaraj, Tim Van Vugt, and Skyler Wilson. Phillip Ross, my former research assistant at the University of San Francisco, now a doctoral student at Boston University, worked tirelessly on some of the data compilation and experimental research for this project. Many thanks also to Jimmy Hsu, the owner of the Blue Danube Coffee House in the Richmond district of San Francisco, for his generous cooperation with our project. I would like to thank members of my faculty book club at the University of San Francisco, especially Tom Cavanaugh, Cornelia Van Cott, Casey Flaherty, Catrina Hayes, and Sunny Wong, who along with Stephanie Antalocy, Kathy Berla, Tracy Seeley, Debby Wilbur, and Max Zeigler, read over the entire manuscript at different stages, offering constructive comments that chipped the edges off a rough manuscript and helped shape it into a novel. This book was substantially improved by the edits and suggestions of contracting editors Dave Lambert and Nicci Jordan Hubert. Nobody could ask for a more helpful and encouraging editor than mine at Thomas Nelson, Ami McConnell. Thank you, Ami, for your insightful comments and passion for the book. The title originates from the thoughtful creativity of Thomas Nelson’s wonderful publisher, Daisy Hutton. Jeremy Milford and Diana Milford helped with the design process. I want to express my deepest thanks to my agent at the Agency Group in New York, Sasha Raskin, for believing that an economics professor could write fiction and for immensely helpful comments on the original manuscript. Thank you to all the members of Mayan Partners here in the US and in Guatemala, and to Max Bixcul, Juan Ajcoc, and Vicenta and Diego Navichoc in San Pedro, Guatemala, for so many great stories about coffee-growing. A special thank-you to my parents, Richard and Judy Wydick, who taught me how to write and gave detailed comments on early drafts. Finally, I would like to acknowledge and thank my daughters, Allie (9) and Kayla (4). It may not always have seemed like it at the time, but those little interruptions in the office were peace for my soul. Above all, I would especially like to thank the Lord, who gives so much grace every day. And last I am so grateful for my favorite coffee drinker of all, my beautiful wife, Leanne Wydick, who has exhibited the patience of Job with me as this book has slowly come to fruition.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo by Karly Loofbourrow
BRUCE WYDICK IS PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS AND INTERNATIONAL studies at the University of San Francisco. He has published academic articles in leading economics journals on the impact of development programs such as microfinance and farm animal donation, and was the lead investigator of the worldwide impact study of Compassion International’s child sponsorship program. He also writes a regular column on economic issues for Christianity Today.