Are Cooperatives More Productive Than Investor-Owned Firms? Cross-Industry Evidence From Portugal

We analyse empirically whether cooperatives and investor-owned firms differ in terms of productive efficiency. Using rich Portuguese panel data covering a wide range of industries, we apply two different empirical approaches to estimate potential differences in productive efficiency. The results from our benchmark random-effects model show that cooperatives are significantly less productive, on average, than investor-owned firms, both at the aggregate level and for most of the industries considered. However, the results derived from a System-GMM approach, which is our preferred empirical strategy, are much less conclusive, and we cannot conclude that cooperatives are generally less efficient that investor†owned firms. With either approach, though, we find no evidence that cooperatives are more productive than investor†owned firms in any industry.