In the 1950s and 1960s there was a debate about the nature of an agricultural cooperative: the cooperative as extension of the farm, the cooperative as vertical integration or the cooperative as a firm. We revisit this debate with various concepts from the theory of the firm that have been...

Social capital is one of the most crucial factors determining the effectiveness of operations in a cooperative organisation. When membership of a cooperative decreases, the financial capital also decreases. An important asset of cooperatives is the commitment and loyalty of their members....

We develop a holdup model where multiple parties in the food chain (input suppliers, farmers, and buyers of the produce) invest in co-specific assets necessary for an innovative product. Shapley value is used in a multilateral bargaining game to assign bargaining power to the players, which...