Producer Cooperatives: a Transaction Cost Economic Approach

This paper aims at positioning producer cooperatives within the Transaction Cost Economics theory, one of the most cited and prolific theories on management studies. To accomplish this goal, I will answer the questions what is a cooperative, which transactions producer cooperatives regulate, under which market conditions they operate, and where are the boundaries for such organizations. This paper offers a comprehensive framework to study producer cooperatives, adopting a comparative institutional point of view, where producer cooperatives are compared with markets, firms and other hybrid types.