Joachim de Weerdt: Paying More For Less. Why don't households in Tanzania take advantage of bulk discounts

Using two week transaction  diaries covering 48,499 purchases by 1,499 households, we find that through bulk purchasing the average household could spend 9.1% less without reducing purchasing quantities. We investigate several explanations for these patterns, and find the most likely mechanisms to be worries about over-consumption of stocks and avoidance of social taxation. Contrary to prior work, we find little indication that liquidity constraints prevent households from buying in bulk, possibly because the bulk quantities in our context are not very large.