Advances in agricultural cooperative research since 2007: A review of Chinese Agricultural Economics literature

Following implementation of the Agricultural Cooperative Law in July 2007, the number of cooperatives increased dramatically, as did the related research in China. The objective of this paper is to describe articles written in Chinese and published in the top six Chinese Agricultural Economics journals between 2007 and 2017, identify research trends and issues, generate observations, and provide insights for future research. A secondary objective is to introduce to the non‐Chinese speaking world a literature written by Chinese scholars as they view the emergence of this new organizational form in the agricultural sector. Our interest is to illustrate Chinese cooperative literature within two general approaches: articles which address agricultural cooperatives’ inter‐firm coordination issues and articles which study the mechanism design which we call intra‐firm coordination. A total of 443 articles were reviewed, 163 dealing with inter‐firm coordination and 280 with intra‐firm coordination. The inter‐firm coordination articles focused on firm coordination mechanisms and formal institutions such as cooperative law, accounting rules, financial markets, and government support. Intra‐firm coordination articles focused on organization design, cooperative governance, relationships between members and cooperative, property rights, and hierarchical structures with embedded principal–agent issues. We conclude with observations about trends, quality, and the cooperative future and also propose useful research fields for Chinese scholars.