Relationship of Pooling to Equity Capital and Current Assets of Large Producer Marketing Cooperatives

Committed marketing cooperatives have ensured member support and because of pooling may have higher leverage relative to buy-sell cooperatives. The hypothesis tested in this article is that marketing cooperatives with pooling have less market risk compared with those without pools and as a consequence can incur more financial risk and command greater leverage. Using an econometric approach to control for size of cooperative, empirical results suggest that pooling cooperatives have increased leverage, about 9 percent more than nonpooling cooperatives.