Organizational dynamics of worker cooperatives in Argentina

Worker cooperatives in Argentina have experienced important changes since the beginning of the nineties and their presence became meaningful from 2003 onwards, due to the stimulation of public policies oriented towards their promotion. Similarly to the context under which they were formed, the unfavourable economic conditions and the worsening of work and life conditions of workers played a major role in the rebirth of the sector. Based on case studies, the article suggests an organizational typology which considers business and associative performance of work cooperatives. The typology accounts for the diverse organizational dynamics and meanings the cooperative model adopts.     

The emergence of winemaking cooperatives in Catalonia

This article traces the emergence of winemaking cooperatives in Catalonia, one of southern Europe’s main winegrowing regions. It analyses the stimuli that led to the creation of winemaking cooperatives in the early twentieth century and the difficulties that they faced in a depressed wine market, such as financing the construction of winemaking facilities, the governance and organisation of cooperative services, and marketing their produce. I explore the reasons why many more wine cooperatives were created in Catalonia in early twentieth century than in Spain’s other winegrowing regions and I try to identify the obstacles that hindered their further development.     

试论小岗村农民专业合作社发展问题

安徽凤阳的小岗村是中国农村改革的发源地,然而该村的农民专业合作社还处在初级发展阶段。发展中也遇到了一些困难,如农民专业合作意识有待加强、缺乏专业合作社人才、基层政府重视不够等等。应加大合作社法的宣传力度,培养合作社专业人才,完善内部管理机制等,以促进小岗村农民专业合作社健康快速发展。     

Economic Considerations in Forming Consumer Cooperatives and Establishing Pricing and Financing Policies

This study identifies structural features of markets which provide inducements for consumers to form cooperatives, and derives conditions under which consumer welfare is enhanced through cooperation. Market-failure conditions are discussed which may provide consumers with an economic incentive to form cooperatives. Also addressed, through application of a simple game theory model, are issues concerning optimal pricing, financing arrangements and cooperative stability. In this regard, it is shown that prevailing cooperative pricing and financial methods often tend to needlessly restrict output and membership and, consequently, cause unit costs to be higher than necessary in an increasing-returns-to-scale environment, which it is argued, is the typical environment for most consumer cooperatives. Instability, in turn, tends to occur when cooperatives attempt to operate at outputs beyond those associated with minimum average cost because some members may reduce their patronage costs through formation of a new, smaller cooperative.     

Exploring the efficiency of Italian social cooperatives by descriptive and principal component analysis

Over the last decade, independent agencies, institutions and research centres (ISTAT—National Statistic Office, Ministry of Economic Development, Confcooperative Legacoop, Unioncamere) have provided studies on the evolution of the cooperative movement in the Third Sector in Italy in order to monitor the development of these organizations over time and to evaluate their economic and employment impact in the country. Following a similar path, this study analyzes the contribution of social cooperatives in Italy at a regional level, highlighting the differences related to their longevity and fields of activity. Moreover, the article evaluates the efficiency and profitability of the social cooperative by adopting principal component analysis to economic and financial indexes.     

Financial development and the growth of cooperative firms

The purpose of this article is to empirically assess the relationship existing between local financial development and the growth of firms, with a special focus on cooperatives. Using Italian data, a multiplicative interaction model is specified, so as to allow the impact of local banking development to differ between cooperative and non-cooperative firms. The main finding is that although local banking development represents a determinant of firms’ growth, regardless of their legal structure, it plays a special role in boosting the growth of cooperatives. This result provides evidence in favor to the existence of an institutional complementarity relationship between the development of local banking institutions and cooperative firms.

农村信用社改革中忽视的一个重大问题:农户金融合作行为

反反复复的农村信用社改革绩效不如人意,重要原因是理论上忽视对农户金融合作行为研究,改革实践排斥农户参与改革。把农户金融合作行为看作外生变量,结果农户被动参与改革,改革的绩效就不言而喻了。实际上,农户金融合作意愿是农村合作金融组织的微观基础或前提,是决定农村合作金融成败的关键内生变量,而非外生变量。因此,要重视农户金融合作行为研究,根据农户金融合作意愿而不是政府的偏好或效用函数进行农村信用社产权改革。     

Staatliche Beihilfen und Beihilfenkontrolle im Agrarsektor

In 2010, EU member states granted worth yy10.3bn aid to their agricultural sector. Given the requirement to revise the guidelines for state aid in the agricultural sector by the end of 2013, this article presents the legal rules and facts of this topic from an economic point of view. It is shown that economic methods which have been increasingly used in state aid control for non-agricultural sectors since 2005 can also be used for the analysis of state aid in the agricultural sector. Additional research is required to further develop these methods and establish the benefi ts of their application.     

20世纪50年代我国农业生产合作组织发展回顾与评析

20世纪50年代的农业合作化运动对于中国的经济和社会发展产生了深远的影响。在这一过程中,农业生产合作组织经历了从互助组到初级社再到高级社的历史演变,并最终异化为高度集体化的人民公社。考察这一时期我国的农业生产合作组织,一方面可以正确认识过去,另一方面也有利于从中汲取经验和教训,为推进新时期我国农业的生产合作提供启示。     

A Comparative Performance Analysis of New Wave Food Cooperatives and Private Food Stores

The purpose of this study was to determine what “new wave” store front food cooperatives offer their patrons, relative to private grocery stores. A marketbasket price survey of 73 non-meat food items was conducted at 10 cooperatives and eight private stores in the Minneapolis/St. Paul Area in 1981. Consumer satisfaction was examined via a mail questionnaire returned by 1,089 patrons of both store types. A new kind of food cooperative shopper was identified, the minor user. Minor users were more recent cooperative patrons and more closely resembled a traditional, established, middle-class family. Unlike the more traditional co-op user, price was the most important store choice criterion for the minor user. Cooperatives were judged by their patrons to be performing slightly less satisfactorily than private stores. However, the two store types were not found to differ in their performance of the two functions most important to consumers, i.e., price and quality. Member shoppers at a cooperative could save 15 percent, or about $290 per year for the average household, a return on a typical member's work contribution of $6.04 per hour.     

合作社社员权益保障的价值取向

合作经济组织的根本宗旨和最终追求在于市场经济体制中处于不利竞争地位的弱势群体,通过充分合作实现自助、自立与自我服务,最终实现自身权益的有效保护与扩大。因而,充分保障合作社社员的民主政治权利,将有利于促进合作经济组织的发展,从而直接服务于构建和谐社会和建设小康社会这一经济社会发展目标;有效保障合作社社员的经济权利,正是充分发挥现代法的保护社会弱势群体利益等利益调整功能的具体内涵;广泛保障合作社社员的社会权利,实现合作经济组织的独立社会团体地位,也是实现国家权力的社会回归的必然要求。     

The Potential for Growth of Consumer Cooperatives: A Comparison with Producer Cooperatives

Over the past decade, widespread interest has developed among consumers in the formation of cooperatives, raising the question of how economically viable these cooperatives will be over time. This paper presents an analysis which shows that the potential for growth of consumer cooperatives will depend on the success of cooperatives in increasing management efficiency and in developing a range of more sophisticated financial instruments, including reorganizing as capital stock cooperatives and using borrowed capital. In addition, federation, consolidation and vertical integration may be needed. These conclusions are derived from analysis of the cost functions of the cooperative firm and from comparative analysis of the structural evolution of producer marketing cooperatives and consumer cooperatives.     

More or Less Ambition in the Doha Round: Winners and Losers from Trade Liberalisation with a Development Perspective

What is at stake in the standoff and suspension of the Doha Round of trade talks? What impact would an agreement based on greater or lesser levels of ambition have on developing countries, whose economies are relatively dependent on agriculture? Using the MIRAGE computable general equilibrium model of the global economy, in this article we compare different scenarios for the Doha agricultural and NAMA negotiations, taking real numbers from the proposals on the table from the United States (US) and the European Union (EU) in December 2005. The results for both scenarios demonstrate the high stakes for successful completion of this negotiation given the positions articulated by the countries involved. A cooperative reform outcome by the US and the EU – based on the most ambitious components of their negotiating proposals – delivers noticeably more benefits than an unambitious outcome. We measure the degree of ambition in each scenario by the construction of a Mercantilist Trade Restrictiveness Index and focus the analysis on the impacts on developing countries.     

Entrepreneurs and the context of cooperative organizations: A definition of cooperative entrepreneur

We focus on the role of entrepreneurs in organizations that are structured as cooperatives. In considering the similarities and differences among various forms of entrepreneurship, a comprehensive definition of the cooperative entrepreneur is formulated. A model illustrating four variations in the manner in which cooperative entrepreneurship contributes to the creation of cooperatives is also presented. These contributions help to more clearly frame future research and lend visibility to the challenges faced by entrepreneurs in the cooperative context. Copyright © 2013 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Economic Impacts of Turkish Accession to the European Union

Half a century has passed and Turkey is no further toward achieving EU membership. Under the mandate of the Barcelona Declaration, EU–Turkish industrial tariffs will be abolished, whilst agro‐food protectionism remains largely intact. Consequently, the direct impacts from a hypothetical EU accession scenario will be concentrated in agro‐food sectors, whilst their share of economic output in Turkey implies ‘secondary’ macro impacts. To this end, a computable general equilibrium (CGE) framework is employed to quantitatively reassess full Turkish accession. Unlike previous CGE studies, agriculture, fishing and food sectors are disaggregated, whilst significant advancements to the ‘standard’ model code are incorporated to capture the vagaries of agricultural factor, input and product markets. In addition, a realistic ‘baseline’ scenario is constructed including ‘up to date’ trade and domestic agricultural policy reforms prior to Turkish entry to the EU. The results show that trade‐led gains in Turkey are moderated due to tariff liberalisation prior to EU entry, whilst Turkey receives significant budgetary transfers from the CAP budget, which are ‘mirrored’ as EU‐27 costs. With additional migration effects, Turkish (EU‐27) production possibilities fall (rise), whilst real income per capita rises (falls).     

EU telecommunications and electricity markets—Heading towards price convergence?

This paper investigates the sources of intra-EU price dispersion in two important network industries, namely telecommunications and electricity. Both sectors experienced substantial regulatory reforms over the past couple of years, resulting in the widespread introduction of competition in traditionally monopolistic markets. The empirical results reported in this paper confirm that the introduction of competition in these sectors resulted in significant downward price effects. Further progress with regulatory reforms in telecommunications and electricity is likely to result in further price falls in these sectors and reduced price level differences across EU Member States. The content of this article is entirely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Central Bank.     

Accounting Window Dressing and Template Regulation: A Case Study of the Australian Credit Union Industry

This article documents the response of cooperative institutions that were required to adhere to new capital adequacy regulations traditionally geared for profit-maximising organisations. Using data from the Australian credit union industry, we demonstrate that the cooperative philosophy and internal corporate governance structure of cooperatives will lead management to increase capital adequacy ratios through the application of accounting window dressing techniques. This is opposite to the intended purpose of template regulation aimed at efficiently increasing operating margins and lowering risk. Our results raise several debatable issues regarding the ethics of accounting management and the imposition of one-shoe-fits-all external regulation.      

Die „Diesel-Debatte“: ökonomische Handlungsempfehlungen an die Politik

Diesel technology and the associated environmental burden of local and global pollutant emissions have long been the focus of environmental policy debates. This article considers various negative external effects resulting from the use of combustion engines. A number of economic policy instruments can help to reduce these effects in the long term, such as the introduction of an urban road pricing scheme that is linked to local pollution levels, a greater focus on CO2 abatement in the sectors included in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS), or the integration of the transport sector into the EU ETS.     

Economic Patriotism, the Clash of Capitalisms, and State Aid in the European Union

This article analyses the political economy of state aid in the European Union (EU) using the concepts of economic patriotism and models of capitalism. State aid is analysed as a form of economic patriotism, which is conceived here as economic interventions which seek, by a number of means, to advance the perceived economic self-interest of particular groups and actors (firms, workforces, or sectors) defined according to their territorial status. The article argues that the paradox of neo-liberal democracy generated by liberal international markets, overlapping economic governance regimes (such as the EU and the World Trade Organisation), and nationally delimited political mandates presents new problems for policy-makers attempting economic interventions like state aid. Forms of economic patriotism are partly shaped by national institutional and social configurations and state traditions. Within EU economic governance, this generates a ‘clash of capitalisms’ whereby liberal EU anti-trust and competition policy norms proscribe certain state aid and industrial policy measures favoured by some European states. As traditional industrial policy becomes decreasingly viable, new modes of economic patriotic interventionism are enacted within contemporary processes of market-making, and the re-regulatory activity framing European markets. The paper focuses on French state aid responses to the global economic crisis, noting how the retreat of neo-liberal ebullience within the EU provides a conducive environment for resurgent French dirigiste approaches to state aid, indicating that the politics of economic patriotism and state aid will continue to be important features of the European political economic landscape in the years ahead.     

Foreign direct investment productivity premium and foreign affiliates' heterogeneity: A comparison between advanced and emerging market overseas investments in the EU

This paper aims to investigate the existence of productivity heterogeneity among foreign‐owned firms (FOFs) based in the European Union (EU). Using firm‐level data for a sample of FOFs investing in the EU over the period 2006–14, we find that foreign affiliates from advanced countries (AFOFs) show a positive productivity gap compared to foreign affiliates from emerging countries (EFOFs). However, when we consider the type and the motivation of foreign direct investment, our results reveal that, while AFOFs always seem to be more productive than EFOFs in manufacturing sectors, EFOFs appear to enjoy a productivity premium compared to AFOFs in the services, when their activity occurs in the same industry as their parent and they operate in less knowledge‐intensive market sectors.