Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics最新文献

We analyze the problem of fairly locating two facilities providing a public good in two spatial models: a city line and a network. Each facility is characterized not only by its location but also by its quality. We introduce new notions of envy-freeness and fairness that can be applied to spatial settings. We show that the tax scheme adopted to finance the public good has a key role in determining the existence of a spatially fair configuration of facilities.

This study investigates the commitment of farmer members to traditional and hybrid cooperatives, and examines how and why their commitment has changed over time. The empirical basis consists of three surveys of representative samples of Finnish farmers conducted in 2010, 2013 and 2016. Dairy cooperatives in Finland have a traditional organizational form. Animal breeders deliver to hybrid cooperatives that have some external investors, but farmers have the majority of the votes. In both industries, the farmers are committed to their cooperatives and increasingly so over the years. This is particularly true of dairy farmers. However, the members’ commitment is based more on their satisfaction with the cooperatives’ business activities rather than on any cohesion within the cooperative societies. One explanation for this is that primary agriculture is becoming more consolidated, with fewer but larger farms whose owners are business oriented and professional.

Although teff (Eragrostis tef) is a very important staple food crop in Ethiopia, its production is constrained by low productivity due to poor access and adoption rate of improved seed by farmers. The government of Ethiopia envisions realizing an efficient teff value chain that enables a sustainable increase of smallholder teff productivity. As a result, the government is supporting seed producer cooperatives (SPCs) to supply improved teff seeds to farmers. The aim of this study is to compare teff productivity at household level among members and nonmembers of SPCs. To this end, a cross-sectional survey design with multi-stage sampling method was used to select 386 sample households (193 SPC members and 193 nonmembers). As membership in a cooperative is voluntary, farmers may self-select into a given SPC according to their own motivation and interest. In a bid to address the potential issue of selection bias from both observed and unobserved heterogeneities, we employ the treatment effects model (TEM), which allows for a specific correlation structure between the unobservables that affect the treatment and the unobservables that affect the potential outcomes. Results show that, on average, SPC members produce 1.406 more quintals per hectare compared with their nonmember counterparts.

Member commitment has an impact on the viability and success of cooperatives. While there are studies on member engagement in European and American cooperatives, empirical research on member commitment in Chinese agricultural cooperatives is rare. Using a sample of 391 farmer cooperative members in China, this study investigates the factors associated with member commitment, particularly whether trust in the cooperative leadership and social pressure at village level affect member commitment. In addition, the study explores the pathway how trust and social pressure affect member commitment by employing structural equation modelling. Our results show that both trust and social pressure are positively associated with the three components of member commitment – affective commitment, continuance commitment and normative commitment – in a direct way. Furthermore, trust in the leadership impacts affective commitment indirectly via the mediation of member participation. These findings can be used by cooperative leaders, policy makers and rural administrators to strengthen member commitment and thereby the economic viability of agricultural cooperatives and the communities in which they are embedded.

Non-compliance with transparency obligations among publicly owned enterprises has revealed the lack of coercive capacity of the legislation. In this context, literature suggests that mandatory disclosure becomes a matter of company willingness, but this has not been empirically tested so far. Drawing on Oliver's (1991) typology of organizational strategies and studies on normativity production, this study analyzes whether voluntary disclosure levels of financial and non-financial information determine compliance with transparency legal requirements for the case of Andalusian state-owned enterprises (SOEs) owned by local and regional governments. We have verified this question using linear regression analysis. The analysis proves that when transparency legislation lacks enforcement power, the level of voluntary disclosure determines the level of legal compliance. Both voluntary and mandatory disclosure levels are explained by the same determinants, suggesting that disclosure is determined by reasons of legitimacy and commitment to transparency. This contributes to the research lines on normativity and transparency in SOEs, being also relevant for lawmakers. This study provides evidence for Oliver's (1991) theoretical arguments about firms' strategies in the face of institutional pressures. It offers policy-makers and SOE managers an insight into how prepared SOEs are to respond to the demands for greater transparency.

This paper aims to empirically explore the linkage between the cooperative sector and economic growth in Italian provinces (NUTS-3), through a panel analysis covering the period between 2013 and 2019. We hypothesize that the cooperative sector can contribute to economic growth through its ability to generate social capital, thereby helping to mitigate market failures. The empirical analysis does not provide us with robust evidence of the positive connection between the cooperative sector as a whole and local economic growth. However, when we disaggregate the cooperative sector into ordinary and social cooperatives, we find intriguing results. Indeed, there is robust evidence of a negative relationship between the territorial distribution of ordinary cooperatives and economic growth, while for social cooperatives we find a positive relationship. We interpret these results as showing that the pursuit of general interest objectives, which allows the principle of mutuality to be extended to indirect forms of reciprocity, could make cooperative firms more effective in promoting the economic performance of territories. This is because they are more likely to generate bridging social capital that encourages the spread of generalized trust, a key factor in the advancement of modern market economies.

We use a database composed of 2,545 Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) worldwide for the period 2008–18 to explore the effect of a larger share of women's workforce on both staff wages and overall monetary compensation within MFIs. MFIs are different from other industries, as they are traditionally women-centered, i.e. they have a significant share of women employees at every level of the corporate hierarchy and mostly serve women clients. Applying both traditional estimation methodology and techniques aimed at accounting for possible endogeneity among the main variables, we find that a higher proportion of women on staff significantly increases the average expense per worker (which also includes the incentive components of remuneration) while the effects are considerably smoothed (or not significant) on the base salary. This leads us to conclude that, unlike what is seen in other sectors of the economy, MFIs do not pay women less. Yet, significant positive effects of women in the workforce, especially on average overall monetary compensation, suggest that women are likely to exploit their superior skills and/or gender affinity advantages with customers of the same gender to enhance MFIs’ efficiency and profitability, thereby achieving higher incentive compensation, mostly in the form of bonuses and other benefits.

In sub-Saharan Africa, there are growing calls for policy reforms to revive the farmer cooperative movement. However, questions remain over whether farmer participation in agricultural cooperatives brings the desired innovation for markets and commercialization. This study uses a sample of 206 farmers from northern Uganda to examine what drives farmer participation and commercialization among members of groundnut producer cooperatives. Results from a two-stage Heckman regression reveal that cooperative functioning in the form of hiring equipment to farmers, value addition, farmer training, and product quality assessment drives farmer participation in cooperative business. The study also shows that equity strategies, notably through subscription fees and farm-inputs supply negatively impact commercialization among cooperative participant farmers. This study deepens the literature on cooperatives pinpointing the role of cooperative services in farmer participation and how stringent equity strategies reduce farmer commercialization among cooperative participants. We call for policy interventions that prioritize capacity building of producer cooperatives for improved functioning and better provision of services. This approach will enable these cooperatives to be effectively harnessed for market innovation.

Crowdfunding is an innovative means of financing entrepreneurial initiatives. This study explores the effect of signaling on the crowdfunding performance of social economy organizations (SEOs) in South Korea. Analyzing 677 reward-based crowdfunding projects by SEOs, we found that signaling social purpose, economic purpose, and organizational information were likely to be related to performance. In addition, signals reflecting an isomorphism akin to that of SEOs' identity were also positively correlated with crowdfunding performance. These findings contribute to the literature by offering insights about the effect of signals of SEOs on crowdfunding and demonstrating that fundraiser characteristics may influence crowdfunding performance.