Hmm, I don’t know anything about those examples. But in Norway two of the biggest coops are Tine (dairy producer) and Coop (grocery store)*[1], and my understanding is that those were created through fusing many already existing local cooperatives. Which makes sense from the argument above, because individual coops still reap benefits from centralization and horizontal integration.
The above argument would predict that you’d see large cooperatives form in industries where you started out with many small and local businesses. (like local farms, local grocery stores).
But if you have a singular cooperative, it itself won’t have incentive to expand. It just might have incentive to fuse if there is another similar cooperative already existing.
Hmm, I don’t know anything about those examples. But in Norway two of the biggest coops are Tine (dairy producer) and Coop (grocery store)*[1], and my understanding is that those were created through fusing many already existing local cooperatives. Which makes sense from the argument above, because individual coops still reap benefits from centralization and horizontal integration.
The above argument would predict that you’d see large cooperatives form in industries where you started out with many small and local businesses. (like local farms, local grocery stores).
But if you have a singular cooperative, it itself won’t have incentive to expand. It just might have incentive to fuse if there is another similar cooperative already existing.
This is a consumer-owned coop. Those also have somewhat different dynamics, maybe?