A Model of Cooperative Finance: Comment
评论了VanSickle和Ladd关于合作社金融运作的分析，指出其经验结果与直觉相反，认为应审视其合作社目标概念化。
In a recent article in this Journal, VanSickle and Ladd (VL) presented an interesting economic analysis of the financial operations of a Section 521 cooperative. They also reported some surprising empirical results that suggested cooperatives should substitute equity capital (stock and deferred patronage refunds) for debt capital when the cooperative members' opportunity cost for capital is 12% and the interest rate for debt capital is between 7% and 10%. Intuitively, one would expect to obtain results that are exactly opposite to those of VL since debt capital has a lower cost than equity capital. Therefore, I believe VL's conceptualization of the cooperative objective should be scrutinized.