| Agricultural cooperatives are participating in mergers, acquisitions, strategic alliances, and joint ventures at a record pace. While post-post merger performance has been examined extensively for investor owned firms, this has not been the case for agricultural cooperatives since these firms do not have an explicit profit motive nor publicly traded stock. Results from a three-stage econometric model reveal that a major motivation for cooperatives to engage in these activities is to circumvent unique capital constraints, thus resulting in improved profitability. Furthermore, the decision to merge and financial performance are jointly endogenous, with profitability positively influenced and sales growth negatively influenced by the likelihood of merger. |
