Nonlinear Pricing Schemes for Agricultural Cooperatives

作者：James Vercammen, Mur 来源：American Journal of Agricultur 日期：2010-02-28 浏览：81

Standard pricing practices are generally not efficient for a cooperative. Sexton (1986) suggests that membership fees/rebates can be used to facilitate efficient pricing, but such schemes may not be feasible because of membership heterogeneity and information asymmetries. In this paper a constrained efficient pricing rule for a cooperative is derived that explicitly addresses the heterogeneity and information constraints. The optimal rule generally entails nonlinear pricing which, for the case of a farm purchasing cooperative, entails a higher average price for higher delivery volumes. The constrained efficient rule is modified to distribute the benefits more evenly over the cooperative's membership.
Key words: agricultural cooperatives, asymmetric information, membership fees, nonlinear pricing.
American Journal of Agricultural Economics Vol. 78, No. 3 (Aug., 1996), pp. 572-584
Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the Agricultural & Applied Economics Association

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