Experimentation and Optimal Output Decisions: The Cooperative Versus the Entrepreneurial Firm

This paper studies and contrasts the experimental inclinations of entrepreneurial and cooperative firms supplying a perishable good under uncertain demand, when larger stocks might yield additional information about the demand-generating process. While these firms might react differently, and in the case of the cooperative not unambiguously, to environmental change, neither variant will find the higher output---possibly more informative---option especially attractive.