The Allocation of Property Rights within Registered Co-operatives in Germany

While other parts of the new institutional economics (e. g. principal agent theory,transaction cost theory) have already been applied to co-operative researchwith some success, property rights theory has as yet been only rarelyused in this regard. At the same time, the traditional structure of co-operatives,namely of co-operatives in Germany, has found itself to be in the middle of asomewhat controversial discussion. Especially subscribers to the shareholdervalue philosophy have criticized the co-operative structure as lacking in incentivesand being outmoded. Maybe property rights theory has some input tooffer for the proposed reforms.