Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics最新文献

This paper explores the long-term impact of China's Great Leap Forward (GLF) on current differences in cooperative behaviour across Chinese regions and the underlying trust channel of causality. Combining the current firm-level survey with grain yield over-reporting during the GLF era, we find that past government dishonesty regarding over-reporting in the GLF period has long-term negative consequences on people's behaviours. The firms in the prefecture with a higher degree of yield over-reporting are less likely to engage in R&D collaborations today. Further tests reveal the possible trust channel through which past government dishonesty impedes current cooperative behaviour. We extend the analyses to social norms of trust and show that GLF over-reporting has shifted an individual's internal norms towards a present-day mistrust culture, which contributes to explain the negative effect of GLF over-reporting on cooperative behaviour. Our findings suggest that dishonest behaviours by local governments in the past can lead to lasting adverse effects on an individual's behaviour in the form of mistrust and subsequent lower frequencies of cooperative behaviour, providing new insights on the origins of cultural differences and human behaviours by investigating the role of governments in shaping social and economic interactions.

The emergence of agricultural cooperatives is widely viewed as a potential institutional arrangement that can help achieve rural poverty reduction by improving farmers’ welfare in developing countries. However, empirical evidence on the effect of cooperative membership on welfare and rural poverty in sub-Saharan Africa remains limited. This paper examines the effect of cooperative membership on the welfare and poverty levels of maize-farming households, using a comprehensive three-wave panel dataset from three major maize-producing regions in Ethiopia. The welfare effect of cooperative membership was estimated using a correlated random-effects regression with a control function to account for unobservable heterogeneity and the endogeneity of cooperative membership. The findings show that cooperative membership significantly increased maize yield and enhanced the welfare of maize farmers by improving household income, subsequently leading to reductions in the prevalence of income poverty and the poverty gap. Further analysis reveals that while cooperative membership is pro-poor in terms of its effect on maize yield, its effect on income and poverty tends to favour wealthier members with greater assets and extended landholdings. In this light, supporting poor and marginalized farmers with the resources needed would help improve the welfare gains from cooperative membership, thereby ensuring a more inclusive approach to poverty reduction.

The study investigates whether the choice of a financial cooperative is influenced by sustainable savings decisions through deposits or shares. The moderating influence of digital financial services (DFS) and an individual's reason for joining a financial cooperative are also investigated. Data are gathered from a cross-sectional sample of 334 respondents drawn from 86 savings and credit cooperative societies (Saccos) in Kenya. The final sample comprises of 46 deposit-taking (220 respondents) and 40 non–deposit-taking (114 respondents) Saccos. Two-sample tests, correlation and logistic regression analyses are performed to establish the factors influencing Sacco choice. Consistent with the mutual incentives and lifecycle theories, the findings reveal that an individual's choice of a financial cooperative is influenced by individual, as well as socio-economic and environmental factors. The study finds that the desire to mobilize sustainable deposits is a more important consideration compared to building shares when choosing a Sacco. We further find that DFS are important in choosing a Sacco owing to the increased engagement and transparency associated with them. Other factors influencing Sacco choice include marital status, income levels and household location. The results help inform the focus by Sacco managers, regulators and policy makers in terms of the growth incentives to consider.

Business associations (BAs) are often mentioned among formal private-order institutions that support contract enforcement. Despite their ubiquity, evidence about their actual roles is still very limited. We explore empirically four mechanisms through which they can support the credibility of contractual commitments: member selection, norm enforcement, dispute resolution and information sharing. In a developed legal context, firm-level data from an economy-wide managerial survey show that BAs support contractual trust among members, in members by outsiders as well as in outsiders by members. Member selection and information sharing stand out as the most important mechanisms: They help all three relationship types. Dispute resolution helps overcome opportunism between members only. Formalized norm enforcement is a signal of trustworthiness for outsiders. Economic theory suggests that BAs can help establish trust beyond personal and local networks. We find strong evidence that they indeed do.

Platform cooperatives, namely, businesses that sell goods or services primarily through a website, mobile app, or protocol and commit to the principles of democratic governance and shared ownership, have lately been proposed as a more sustainable, equitable and, under certain conditions, even efficient alternative to the organizational model of commercial platforms. Accordingly, they have been presented as economic institutions capable of involving all their relevant stakeholders in an extended and inclusive governance structure. Nevertheless, this emerging literature is still characterized by the lack of a holistic and analytic framework connecting the dispersed studies on the topic through the lens of stakeholder theory and detailing strategic complementarities between these different stakeholders. Related to this point, while dealing with the competitive advantages and challenges of platform cooperatives, little reference has been made to the existing debate in governance theory about the advantages and challenges of cooperative firms as compared to capitalist ones. These research gaps motivated our literature review, which is the first comprehensive systematic review specifically focused on this topic. Given the still-emerging character of the research object, our work also makes way for future updates as new contributions are gradually published.

In the context of recent reforms affecting the public sector, maximizing good governance and performance of state-owned enterprises is a major challenge for governments. The aim of the study is to provide a systematic and holistic review of the literature related to corporate governance and performance of state-owned enterprises, to highlight and clarify the evolutionary trajectory of the field. To achieve the research objective, 409 publications that mention the term state-owned enterprises and performance, indexed in the Web of Science database between 1997 and 2022 were analyzed by applying multiple bibliometric analysis methods and content analysis. The citation and co-citation analysis results offer an outline of the most influential articles and journals, and links between authors, and provides a thematic classification. Through keyword co-occurrence analysis, the paper highlights the research trends in the literature concerning state-owned enterprises and proposes future research directions.

The self-sustainability of microfinance institutions (MFIs) is a growing concern as they work as non-profit organizations to achieve global poverty reduction goals. This study aims to examine the MFIs' self-sustainability using an efficiency measurement technique based on Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). It also determines the influence of different financing sources on MFIs' self-sustainability as well as the moderating impact of external governance on this relationship. It uses the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimator to analyze the panel data from 661 MFIs in 86 countries during the 2010–2018 period. The DEA analysis reveals that MFIs are still in the intermediate stage of self-sustainability in terms of technical and cost efficiency. The second-stage regression results reveal that financing sources such as retained earnings and equity have a robust positive and statistically significant effect on the MFIs' self-sustainability, implying that MFIs that rely more on these two sources are more likely to be self-sustainable. The moderation analysis reveals that good governance accelerates the positive effect of financing sources on MFIs' efficiency. Given these empirical findings, MFIs' decision-makers can benefit from considering their own funding and equity. Quality governance can be ensured by government agencies and regulatory bodies to support the MFIs' sustainability.

Dairy farmers in developing countries face numerous challenges, including price instability, limited credit access, outdated technology adoption, market barriers, and poverty. Cooperatives offer promising solutions to farmers’ problems and help them enhance their agricultural sustainability. Although the impact of cooperative membership has been widely investigated, little evidence is found in dairy farming households. This study estimates the impact of cooperative membership on dairy farmers’ household incomes, net returns, and profits from dairy products (processed and fresh milk). The cross-sectional data were collected from 300 dairy farmers in East Java, Indonesia. Inverse probability weighting with regression adjustment (IPWRA) and two-stage predictor substitution (2SPS) were used in the analysis to address the selection bias in the estimation. The findings are corroborated by a robustness check using propensity score matching. The results show that dairy farmers’ decisions to join a cooperative are positively and significantly influenced by farming experience, transportation ownership, number of cattle owned, and involvement in social activities and are negatively influenced by age. Cooperative membership significantly improves farmers’ welfare by increasing their household incomes, net returns, and profits from fresh milk products. However, the membership reduces profits from processed milk products. These findings suggest that the government should encourage farmers to participate actively in cooperatives.

Outsourcing of public services is under heightened scrutiny. Public managers are asked to conduct thorough “make or buy” assessments to help assure deliverability, affordability, and value for money of public services. The naivety of this request dramatically overlooks the subtlety and challenge faced by public managers. In this paper we connect a range of differently configured contractual agreements to underlying components of “value for money”, namely, the pursuit of economy, efficiency and effectiveness. We set out a framework consisting of conceptual models and the corresponding decision tree to allow comparison across alternative sourcing strategies, considering both the associated transaction costs and transaction benefits. We also use simulation methods to capture uncertainty while establishing the practicality of the framework. This study advocates for moving beyond the polarized ‘make or buy’ debate with more instrumental considerations of “how to buy” from the perspective of the public manager.