ABSTRACT The cooperative landscape in Ethiopia is very heterogeneous with a mixture of remains of the pre-1991 government-controlled system and new post-1991 bottom-up collective action initiatives. This heterogeneity, coupled with a large growth in the number of cooperatives in the country, offers an interesting perspective to study the determinants of the (in)efficiency of cooperatives. In this paper, we analyse the performance of Ethiopian agricultural cooperatives, focusing on the degree of technical (in)efficiency and its determinants. We use the stochastic frontier approach in which we account for heteroskedasticity and the monotonicity of production functions, presenting a methodological improvement with respect to previous technical efficiency studies. The results show that NGO- and government-initiated cooperatives are less efficient than community-initiated ones, implying that governments and NGOs should not interfere too strongly in cooperative formation. Cooperatives with a high degree of heterogeneity in members’ participation are found to be about 98% less efficient, while cooperatives that have paid employees are 33% more efficient. Besides, results show that cooperatives in Ethiopia function more efficiently if they incentivize committee members through monetary compensation.

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自下而上的独立农业合作社真的表现更好吗？埃塞俄比亚技术效率分析的见解

摘要 埃塞俄比亚的合作前景非常复杂，既有 1991 年前政府控制系统的遗迹，也有 1991 年后自下而上的集体行动倡议。这种异质性，加上该国合作社数量的大幅增长，为研究合作社（低）效率的决定因素提供了一个有趣的视角。在本文中，我们分析了埃塞俄比亚农业合作社的绩效，重点关注技术（无）效率的程度及其决定因素。我们使用随机前沿方法，其中我们考虑了异方差和生产函数的单调性，提出了相对于以前的技术效率研究的方法论改进。结果表明，非政府组织和政府发起的合作社的效率低于社区发起的合作社，这意味着政府和非政府组织不应过分干预合作社的形成。发现成员参与程度高度异质性的合作社效率低约 98%，而支付雇员的合作社效率高 33%。此外，结果表明，埃塞俄比亚的合作社如果通过货币补偿来激励委员会成员，则会更有效地运作。