Opportunism in Agricultural Cooperatives in Greece

This paper compares the new institutional economics literature on agricultural cooperatives with their actual operation in Greece. The key contrast revealed by the comparison concerns the role of opportunism. New institutional economics explains cooperatives in terms of their ability to combat external opportunism, subject to the constraints of internal opportunism. In contrast, in Greek agricultural cooperatives internal opportunism is shown to inflate the formal organizational structure and to lower the cooperative's effectiveness in serving its members. The paper discusses some of the theoretical, policy and practical implications of this argument.