Rural Sociology of Village Grain Bank Withdrawal Rationing Rules and Household Post-Harvest Sale Timing in Malawian Village Assemblies: A Regression Discontinuity Analysis of Entitlement Thresholds

Village grain banks in Malawi ration withdrawals through entitlement thresholds that classify households as eligible for full, partial or deferred access to stored maize. The indicator serves as a proxy for household financial inclusion, which conditions the liquidity constraints that mediate between grain bank entitlement and market participation. The sample mean was 15.914 (SD = 12.211), with country values ranging from 2.90 in Congo Democratic Republic to 53.90 in South Africa. The analysis treats entitlement thresholds as institutional discontinuities that alter the shadow price of stored grain and therefore the opportunity cost of delaying sale. Rationing rules function as informal insurance instruments whose distributive effects are regressive at the threshold margin, because households just above the entitlement cutoff face weaker incentives to hold grain and sell earlier at lower prices. The contribution is a sociological reframing of regression discontinuity as a tool for studying institutional rules rather than treatment effects alone, and a set of propositions linking entitlement design to post-harvest market behaviour in village assemblies.