Abstract

Western European countries have recently witnessed legislative reforms concerning the set of rules governing the co-operative type of organizations (and, in particular, the producer co-operatives). The most innovative aspect introduced by these reforms seems the possibility for the co-operatives to include, beside the traditional physical-person members (PPMs), a certain number of financial-backer members (FBMs) who only bring in risk capital. The paper presents a model that tries to ascertain how this element is going to affect the behaviour and the performances of producer co-operatives and which type of incentives will emerge as a result.