Can Production Cooperatives Resolve the Conundrum of “Exclusionary Growth”?

Abstract

In Latin America land redistribution has been viewed as a mechanism for resolving the socioeconomic tensions which have accompanied agricultural development within bimodal agrarian structures. This chapter presents a synopsis of agrarian reform in each country. As a first move toward a fuller evaluation of cooperative production, it compares econometrically the efficiency of the Honduran and Nicaraguan agricultural production cooperatives with a "control group" of private producers who are not burdened by the collective property problems often hypothesized to undercut cooperative production. The chapter estimates whether the economic efficiency of cooperative production can be improved through appropriate choice of incentive and other internal organizational variables. Finally, it draws together the implications of the empirical evidence for the question of what role agricultural production cooperatives can play in resolving exclusionary growth conundrum.