The Economic Preferences of Cooperative Managers

42 Pages Posted: 10 Jun 2019 Last revised: 12 Nov 2024

See all articles by Guillermo Alves

Guillermo Alves

CAF Development Bank of Latin America

Pablo Blanchard

Universidad de la República - Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y de Administración (FCEA)

Gabriel Burdin

University of Leeds - Faculty of Business; IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Mariana Chávez

affiliation not provided to SSRN

Andrés Dean

Universidad de la Republica - Instituto de Economía

Abstract

A growing body of research has been investigating the role of management practices and managerial behaviour in conventional private firms and public sector organizations. However, little is known about managers' behavioural profile in noninvestor-owned firms. This paper aims to fill this gap by providing a comprehensive behavioural characterization of managers employed in cooperatives.We gathered incentive-compatible measures of risk preferences, time preferences, reciprocity, altruism, and trust from 196 Uruguayan managers (half of them employed in worker cooperatives) and 92 first-year undergraduate students. To do this, we conducted a high-stakes lab-in-the-field experiment in which participants played a series of online experimental games and made incentivised decisions. The average payoff in the experiment was approximately 2.5 times higher than the average local managerial wage in the private sector. Our key findings are that (1) the fraction of risk loving subjects is lower among co-op managers compared to conventional managers, and (2) co-op managers appear to be more altruistic than their conventional counterparts. Interestingly, we do not observe significant differences between the two groups across other preference domains, such as impatience, trust, and reciprocity.

Keywords: lab-in-the-field experiment, risk-aversion, time preferences, altruism, reciprocity, trust, managers, cooperatives

JEL Classification: C90, D81, J54

Suggested Citation

Alves, Guillermo and Blanchard, Pablo and Burdin, Gabriel and Chávez, Mariana and Dean, Andrés, The Economic Preferences of Cooperative Managers. IZA Discussion Paper No. 12330, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3390319

Guillermo Alves

CAF Development Bank of Latin America ( email )

Ave. Luis Roche
P.O. Box Carmelitas 5086 Torre CAF, Altamira
Caracas
United States

Pablo Blanchard

Universidad de la República - Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y de Administración (FCEA) ( email )

Eduardo Acevedo 1139
Montevideo, Montevideo 11400
Uruguay

Gabriel Burdin (Contact Author)

University of Leeds - Faculty of Business ( email )

Leeds LS2 9JT
United Kingdom

IZA Institute of Labor Economics ( email )

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

Mariana Chávez

affiliation not provided to SSRN

No Address Available

Andrés Dean

Universidad de la Republica - Instituto de Economía ( email )

Uruguay

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