Excessive leverage is one of the most important problems facing Italian agricultural cooperatives as the competition in the EU intensifies. An empirical study of 500 agricultural cooperatives supports the hypothesis that cooperatives characterized as having “powerful managers” have a capital structure that is significantly different from the “nonpowerful manager” cooperatives. Powerful manager ...

Joseph D. Coffey a poor measure because many farmers hold My remarks will be divided into three parts. multiple memberships, sometimes even in the First, I will comment briefly on the nature of same cooperative. Furthermore, a cooperfarmer cooperatives. Secondly, I will briefly ative member may be an individual farmer or critique Christy's four main points. Third, I it may be a multi-million do...

Recent issues of ARE Update featured articles evaluating the failures of two California marketing cooperatives, Tri Valley Growers (TVG) and Rice Growers Association (RGA). Along with Blue Anchor’s dissolution and Calavo’s conversion, these combined events have created doubts about the future of cooperatives in California agriculture. Restructured forms of cooperatives are emerging. For example...

This paper analyzes how producer cooperatives may bene t households in rural environments. In particular, it explores if cooperatives help poor households to exit poverty through three mechanisms: increases in prices, total factor productivity, and relaxation of credit constraints. In a multi-period model I characterize the conditions that must hold so that the always poor can exit poverty when...

OBJECTIVE This article examines the impact of contracting health care provision to health care cooperatives in Costa Rica. METHODOLOGY The article uses a panel dataset on health care outputs in traditional clinics and cooperatives in Costa Rica from 1990-99. RESULTS Controlling for community socioeconomic characteristics, annual time trends and clinic complexity, the cooperatives conducted ...

This paper aims at positioning producer cooperatives within the Transaction Cost Economics theory, one of the most cited and prolific theories on management studies. To accomplish this goal, I will answer the questions what is a cooperative, which transactions producer cooperatives regulate, under which market conditions they operate, and where are the boundaries for such organizations. This pa...

The general purpose underlying this study is to investigate the factors involved in the success of poultry growers' cooperatives in the provinces of Western Azarbayjan, Ilam, Hamedan, Khuzistan and Kohgilouyeh and Boweir Ahmad. Using the cluster sampling method and the Cochran’s formula, 21 cooperatives and their members and mangers were selected from among 21 cooperatives with 1305 members. St...

The paper focuses on the strict relation between the continuous changes of the diversified tax regimes of the various types of cooperatives and the political composition of the governments succeeding each other in Italy from the after war period to the present. It emerged that the different types of cooperatives prevailing in the leftwing League of Cooperatives or in the Confederation of Italia...

The agricultural sector plays a crucial role in the Greek economy. Cooperatives are an integral part of the agricultural sector and the logistics cost impacts the pricing policy of the agricultural products, taking into consideration the value added of all trading partners along the supply chain. Many governments all over Europe pay special attention to this issue trying to make agriculture pro...

Agricultural cooperatives are often viewed as appropriate vehicles to facilitate vertical coordination with, or horizontal integration between, small farmers who would otherwise be excluded from value-adding opportunities and discerning markets. In South Africa, renewed interest in development-oriented cooperatives saw the introduction of a new Cooperatives Act in 2005, along with support measu...