We develop a financial-contracting theory of the cooperative firm where production requires three generic tasks: working, managing, and monitoring. Workers provide an intermediate input (or labor directly); managers convert the workers' input into a final output; and directors monitor managers....

We study incentives for information sharing among agricultural intermediaries in imperfectly competitive markets for farm output. Information sharing always increases expected grower and total surplus, but may reduce expected intermediary profits. Even when expected profits increase with...