SABIIA - Sistema Aberto e Integrado de Informação em Agricultura (Sabiia)

We use original data to assess if the current incentives to farmer turnover may help the competitiveness of small farms in the Lazio Region (central Italy). Our results show that substantial changes in the policy may be needed. The paper analyzes sharp declining trend in small farm number, discusses its causes and evaluates the policies that have been adopted to stop or slow down this downfall. The regional policy makers consider the ageing of the farmers is a key determinant of the decline of small farms. Consequently, they have designed an incentive policy to generational turnover mainly based on installation payments. Given our empirical findings we conclude that this policy may fail to achieve the stated objectives. Firstly, farms that had a...

EFFECTS OF MANAGERS' POWER ON CAPITAL STRUCTURE: A STUDY OF ITALIAN AGRICULTURAL COOPERATIVES

Palavras-chave: Generational turnover in Agriculture; Installation payments; Agricultural and Food Policy; Q10; Q18.

Ano: 2009

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/52843

Russo, Carlo; Weatherspoon, Dave D.; Peterson, H. Christopher; Sabbatini, Massimo.

Excessive leverage is one of the most important problems facing Italian agricultural cooperatives as the competition in the EU intensifies. An empirical study of 500 agricultural cooperatives supports the hypothesis that cooperatives characterized as having "powerful managers" have a capital structure that is significantly different from the "nonpowerful manager" cooperatives. Powerful manager cooperatives were less leveraged and had a long term strategy that focused on minimizing financial risk by increasing their equity/asset ratio. The result of this strategy is an increased probability of long term international competitiveness.

Tipo: Journal Article

Palavras-chave: Agribusiness.

Ano: 2000

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/34565

EFFECTS OF MANAGERS' POWER ON CAPITAL STRUCTURE: A STUDY ON ITALIAN AGRICULTURAL COOPERATIVES

Russo, Carlo; Weatherspoon, Dave D.; Peterson, H. Christopher; Sabbatini, Massimo.

Tipo: Working or Discussion Paper

Palavras-chave: Agribusiness.

Ano: 1999

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/11753

Modelling Pricing Behavior with Weak A‐Priori Information: Exploratory Approach

In the absence of reliable a priori information, choosing the appropriate theoretical model to describe an industry’s behavior is a critical issue for empirical studies about market power. A wrong choice may result in model misspecification and the conclusions of the empirical analysis may be driven by the wrong assumption about the behavioral model. This paper develops a methodology aimed to reduce the risk of misspecification bias. The approach is based on the sequential application of a sliced inverse regression (SIR) and a nonparametric Nadaraya‐Watson regression (NW). The SIR‐NW algorithm identifies the factors affecting pricing behavior in an industry and provides a nonparametric characterization of the function linking these variables to price. This...

Incentives to Efficient Investment Decisions in Agricultural Cooperatives

Palavras-chave: Agribusiness; Agricultural and Food Policy; Farm Management; Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety; Research Methods/ Statistical Methods.

Ano: 2010

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/100478

Recent studies have questioned the competitiveness of agricultural cooperatives in an industrialized food system, based on empirical results and economic theory. New organizational institutions have been proposed to overcome the cooperative main weaknesses (the so called new generation cooperatives). In this paper, we provide a simple model based on a financial approach to address the issue of cooperative competitiveness and to assess the investment efficiency of both traditional and new generation cooperatives. The main conclusions of the analysis are: i) cooperatives (both traditional and new generation ones) may have incentive to adopt projects that do not maximize the Net Present Value of the firm ii) the institutions of new generation cooperatives are...

Equity Management Practices in Italian Agricultural Cooperatives: A Cluster Analysis Approach

Palavras-chave: Agricultural cooperatives; Investment efficiency; Agribusiness; Agricultural Finance; Q13; Q14.

Ano: 2005

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/24455

In this paper, equity management practices of Italian agricultural cooperatives are described and discussed. Financial statements of 1.483 cooperatives are analyzed in order to provide empirical support to the study. Data confirm cooperative undercapitalization and disclose the existence of diversity in equity management practices even within the same business sector. Thus, in order to highlight the relations between cooperative market strategies and equity management practices a cluster analysis is proposed. Seven main strategic approaches for Italian cooperatives are identified and the emerging equity management practices are discussed. The empirical analysis supports the conclusion that a large number of Italian are implementing "perverse" approaches,...