The Reform of the Western European Cooperative Legislation : A First Assessment from a Bargaining Point of View

The early nineties Western European Cooperation reforms have followed a similar path of innovation. The most innovative change introduced by these reforms is the possibility for the Cooperative firms to comprehend, beside the traditional physical person members (PPlvI's), a certain number of financial-backer members (FBM's), who only bring in risk capital. The paper presents a model that tries to ascertain how these reforms will affect the performance and the property rights regime of Cooperatives and which type of incentives can emerge from this new set of rules.