This paper investigates an important channel through which improved
access to market information could increase the prices that producers receive
from middlemen. I develop a theoretical model of trade between a
farmer and a middleman which allows for the existence of different types
of middlemen. The source of heterogeneity is attitudes towards fairness. I
provide an empirical test of the theory from an original framed field experiment
carried out with farmers and middlemen in India. The model predicts
that there will be a non-monotonic relationship between the benefit
of information and the cost of switching to a new middleman. The results
of the experiment support the predictions of the model and demonstrate
that actual middlemen differ in their attitudes towards fairness, middlemen
make higher offers when the farmer is informed, and the benefit of
information to the farmer varies with the cost of switching.