题目：Quality Control through Retailing Contracts--On the Role of Agricultural Cooperative

报告人：余建宇  教授   西南财经大学经济与管理研究院

主持人：金樟峰  博士后  浙江大学经济学院

时间：2019年11月8日   星期五    11:45-13:15

地点：浙江大学玉泉校区经济学院418室  

Abstract:

Agricultural cooperatives (coops) play an important role in coordinating production of different stakeholders along the agri-food production chain. However, empirical evidence in both developed and developing countries shows that coops are inefficient in providing quality and high-value added products. Question arises why coops still prevail in coordinating quality provision of retailers in the agri-food chain? In this paper, we develop a model to investigate the efficiency of contract and organizational arrangement when farmers' individual quality is not observed by the DS firm. We focus on two prevailing cases in agri-food sector: 1) DS firm directly deals with individual farmers based on a secret (non comitment) contract; 2) DS firm deals with farmers by contracting with a farmer-owned coop. Secret contracts create inefficiency (lower quality and lower quantity) because of the opportunistic behavior of DS firm; while coop may also entail inefficiency because the free-riding problem. We show how the DS firm can design a contract that corrects the free-riding distortion of a coop and achieves the efficiency when DS firm observe individual quality. This paper thus provides a new explanation on the positive role of coop in quality provision along agri-food chain.

Introduction:

余建宇，西南财经大学经济与管理研究院，教授。毕业于法国图卢兹经济学院。研究方向包括农业产业经济、产业组织理论，农业合作社、食品安全、农产品产业链等。相关成果发表于American Journal of Agricultural Economics, European Review of Agricultural Economics, Journal of Retailing, Economics Letters, 《经济研究》，《世界经济文汇》等杂志。独立主持国家自然科学基金两项。

CRPE秘书处
2019-11-4