Jos Bijman (1959) is senior researcher at the Agricultural Economics Research Institute
(LEI), The Hague, The Netherlands. He studied political science at the University of
Amsterdam. After his graduation in 1988 he worked two years as a researcher at the
Department of International Relations and International Public Law, Faculty of Social
Sciences, University of Amsterdam. Next, he worked for one year as a teacher at the
Faculty of Philosophy and Technical Social Sciences, Delft Technical University. In
September 1991 he joined the LEI, where his research initially focused on technology
assessment and socio-economic impacts of agricultural biotechnology. In recent years he
has extended his expertise to internationalisation of agribusiness and the organisation of
(international) agrifood chains.
The author has written many reports and articles on the impact of agricultural
biotechnology, recently in the (electronic) journals AgBioForum (www.agbioforum.org),
Biotechnology and Development Monitor, International Journal of Biotechnology and Food
Policy. Articles on internationalisation, co-operatives and the organisation of the agrifood
chain have appeared in Dutch journals, such as Co?peratie, Spil, TSL, Maandschrift voor
Accountancy en Bedrijfseconomie, and in English journals such as American Journal of
Agricultural Economics, and the European Review of Agricultural Economics.This thesis studies the efficiency of the marketing co-operative for
carrying out transactions with farm products. A co-operative is a
special type of governance structure, characterised by collective
ownership and forward vertical integration. These characteristics
influence investment decisions by farmers and other firms in the
agrifood chain. As vertical co-ordination has become more important
in agrifood markets, investments in production and marketing
become co-specialised. The main question is whether the farmerowned
co-operative induces optimal incentives for complementary
investments in two (or more) stages of the chain. The empirical
research focuses on the Dutch fruit and vegetable industry