The recent globalization of world economies has led the retail markets of developed countries towards increasing levels of integration and strategic interdependence. A non negligible share of retail and food markets is currently served by co-operative societies. Consistently with this trend, the...

The aim of this paper is to study the welfare e¤ects of consumer cooperatives in mixed oligopoly markets. We show that under decreasing returns to scale and su¢ ciently high market competition these …rms can contribute more to social welfare when acting on behalf of all consumers rather than...

Consumer cooperatives constitute a highly successful example of democratic forms of enterprises operating in developed countries. They are usually organized as medium and large-scale ?rms competing with pro?t-maximizing ?rms in retail industries. This paper models such situation as a mixed...

Consumer co-operatives constitute a highly successful example of democratic forms of enterprises operating in developed countries. They are usually organized as medium or large-scale firms competing with profit seeking firms in retail industries. In this paper we model such a situation as a...