PUBLIC POLICY SUPPORT FOR AGRICULTURAL COOPERATIVES: AN ORGANIZATIONAL ECONOMICS APPROACH

This paper addresses the issue of whether nontraditional agricultural cooperatives should be eligible for receiving public policy support. We adopt an organizational economics approach that appears to better inform policy design and suggest critical questions that both policy makers and regulators need to address before introducing measures and sanctions. After discussing the introduction of innovative cooperative models characterized by a whole new set of ownership and control rights, we recast vaguely defined property rights problems as attempts to maximize efficiency and avoid organizational decline rather than to take advantage of excessive market power in highly concentrated oligopsonistic/oligopolistic markets.