Can geographical factors determine the choices of farmers in the Ethiopian highlands to trade in livestock markets?

Proximity and affiliation to the local market appear to be two of the most relevant factors to explain farmer's choices to select a particular trading point. Physical barriers may limit the options, especially in developing countries. A network of villages linked by traders/farmer-traders sharing livestock markets was built with field data collected in 75 villages from 8 kebelles in the Wassona Werna wereda of the Ethiopian Highlands. Two exponential random graph models were fitted with various geographical and demographic attributes of the nodes (dyadic independent model) and three internal network structures (dyadic dependent model).