Agricultural cooperatives are a significant form of business enterprise. In   many respects, they are similar to the investor-owned, profit-maximizing   firms that, along with other organizations such as households and governmentagencies, form the institutional framework for western economic theory. Yet   as so many authors have pointed out, cooperatives also are distinctly   different from investor-owned firms (IOFs).
    A considerable body of literature exists on the theory of agricultural   cooperation, and it is very diverse in method as well as subject matter.   Cooperatives have been analyzed from both a normative perspective, i.e., howcooperatives should perform to attain a particular norm or objective, and   from a positive perspective, i.e., how they actually do perform. Prior   theoretical work has primarily focused on static price theory and resourceallocation. Little purely theoretical work has been done on cooperative   finance and investment. As recently as 1978, Moore and Fenwick clearly   recognized the deficiency, writing:
    R.W. Cotterill (1987),  Agricultural Cooperatives: A Unified Theory of Pricing, Finance, and Investment, in J.S. Royer (Eds), USDA/ACS, Washington, D.C., pp.171 - 258.