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ARE COOPERATIVES MORE PRODUCTIVE THAN INVESTOR‐OWNED FIRMS? CROSS‐INDUSTRY EVIDENCE FROM PORTUGAL
Author(s) -
MONTEIRO Natália P.,
STRAUME Odd Rune
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
annals of public and cooperative economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.526
H-Index - 37
eISSN - 1467-8292
pISSN - 1370-4788
DOI - 10.1111/apce.12201
Subject(s) - business , industrial organization , panel data , productive efficiency , portuguese , empirical evidence , benchmark (surveying) , empirical research , economics , microeconomics , econometrics , production (economics) , linguistics , philosophy , geodesy , epistemology , geography
We analyse empirically whether cooperatives and investor‐owned firms differ in terms of productive efficiency. Using rich Portuguese panel data covering a wide range of industries, we apply two different empirical approaches to estimate potential differences in productive efficiency. The results from our benchmark random‐effects model show that cooperatives are significantly less productive, on average, than investor‐owned firms, both at the aggregate level and for most of the industries considered. However, the results derived from a System‐GMM approach, which is our preferred empirical strategy, are much less conclusive, and we cannot conclude that cooperatives are generally less efficient that investor‐owned firms. With either approach, though, we find no evidence that cooperatives are more productive than investor‐owned firms in any industry.