Cooperative business firms are prevalent in agribusiness, yet no concise generalized model exists to demonstrate how and why cooperative firms differ from, and may be selected over, the more common investor owned business firm. It is shown within a generic transaction game that cooperatives fill both producer and consumer roles as an aggregated player that is expected to maximize aggregate producer and consumer payoffs rather than maximizing either payoff separately, which contrasts with investor owned firms as essentially two player games between separate and competing producers and consumers where each player seeks to maximize their separate payoff individually. A cardinally valued game theoretic matrix is used to demonstrate the expected differences... |