Abstract

By the late 1990s, the agricultural and rural development in China has entered a new historical stage, the market became a main factor that constrained the adjustment of agricultural structure. When facing the new situation of increasingly market-oriented and international in agriculture, the decentralized farmers how to avoid the natural risks and market risks and enter into the market successfully, has become a major issue of agricultural and rural economic development in China. Domestic and international experience shows that, in order to solve the problem, we must rely on the construction and development of farmer cooperative organizations which has the main form of specialized farmers cooperatives, to increase the level of farmers' organization. With the the promulgation and implementation of“Law of the People's Republic of China on Specialized Farmers Cooperatives”, specialized farmers cooperatives in China will enter a new stage of development according to the law. Researching on the institutional arrangements and the operational performance of specialized farmers cooperatives is significant for improving the efficiency of agricultural operation and increasing the peasants' income.

The aim of this book is to further improve the operational performance of specialized farmers cooperatives. It mainly focus on the two issues in reality: What are the key factors that determine the behavior of contract selection within the cooperative? How about the development law and the internal relations of organizational forms, behavioral characteristics and economic performance in different types of cooperatives? This book uses the agricultural economics, industrial economics, new institutional economics and econometrics comprehensively. Firstly, it elaborates 004 on the organization characteristics and development status of farmer professional cooperatives; then it analyzes as the dynamic mechanism of specialized farmers cooperatives' property rights structure evolution taking system analysis as main research methods; thirdly, it establishes an econometric model of factors that affecting the cooperative' internal contract selections and gives an empirical test to the model through regression analysis method; Finally, it evaluates on the sample cooperatives' performance through establishing the index system of performance evaluation and makes an empirical analysis on the cooperative performance's in-fluencing factors in order to discover the key factors affecting the operational performance of specialized farmers cooperatives.

This paper is divided into eight chapters. The main chapters are unified in the basic logic framework of“situation－structure－conduct－performance”（SSCP）, the main contents and conclusions of each chapter are as follows。

Chapter 1 is the introductory section. From the realistic background of specialized farmers cooperatives development in China, the chapter proposes the purposes and significance of this study, clarifies some confusing concepts, and defines the object of this study, then it proposes the research hypotheses, basic ideas and research methods of this book, and summarizes the possible innovations and shortcomings in this study.

Chapter 2 is the relevant theories and literature review section. The relevant theories part summarizes several new institutional economics used in this study, including transaction cost theory, contract theory and institutional change theory; the literature review part introduces both the research results western agricultural cooperatives has made and the latest development in cooperative theories home and abroad from the perspective of New Institutional Economics.

Chapter 3 is a theoretical framework about the specialized farmers cooperatives. Firstly, from the perspective of vertical and horizontal integration, the chapter divides the coordination of the agricultural industrial organization into three kinds: the market mechanism, the cooperation mechanisms and the integration mechanisms, then it gives the comparative 005 analysis of the three; Secondly, the chapter explains O. E. Williamson's research on the organization with transaction cost theory, namely, the discussion about the relationships between transaction characteristics, contract forms and governance structure in an organization; Finally, it puts up a SSCP framework by which this book follows.

Chapter 4 is the analysis of the organizational characteristics and development status of specialized farmers cooperatives. This chapter firstly describes the nature and organizational characteristics of cooperatives（including the subject and object properties）based on the investigation of the evolution of the international cooperative principles; then it analyzes the overall development situation of specialized farmers cooperatives in China; lastly, it take three typical fruit industry cooperatives as examples, comparatively analyzed the commonness and characteristics of three different types of specialized farmers cooperatives in terms of business model and system characteristics, as well as the social and economic effects due to different development path.

Chapter 5 is the analysis on the property right arrangement of specialized farmers cooperatives. Firstly, the chapter analyses the general characteristics and types of ownership structure in agricultural cooperatives from the perspective of both horizontal and vertical comparisons;then, it analyses evolution trend of ownership structure in traditional cooperatives and the phenomenon of deviation from this structure in depth with the institutional change theory. It argues that it's the internal institutional defects in traditional agricultural cooperatives, such as low efficiency in decision-making process, financial constraints, etc., that enables the organizational institution to change, further more, in the back of these innovative behavior, the relative factor price changes was the root cause of initial institutional change and the preferences of the innovators may affect the marginal institutional adjustment through the subjective model.

Chapter 6 is the analysis of contract selection of the specialized farmers cooperatives. From the perspectine of contract selection, this chapter analyses and compares two different types coexist within the spe-006 cialized farmers cooperatives: commodity contract and factor contract. To the question of which types of contracts to choose, the book introduces the transaction cost factor into the expanded theoretical model and establishes a new explanatory model. The meaning of this model is that the relevant factors of institutional structure may directly affect the contractual arrangements within organizations, meanwhile, the organization's institutional arrangements must be compatible with the trading environment, to avoid the excessive transaction costs. Through the empirical study on 98 specialized farmers cooperatives in Ganzhou, Jiangxi Province, it founds that the organizational structure factor of specialized farmers cooperatives has a significant effects on the behavior of contracts selection; in terms of environment which the specialized farmers cooperatives lives in, all the factors have not significant effects on contracts selection except the government support factor; in terms of transaction costs, both the negotiation cost and the monitoring costs are significant in affecting the contracts selection of specialized farmers cooperatives, but the effect of the information cost is not revealed.

Chapter 7 is the performance evaluation of specialized farmers cooperatives. This chapter first designs 13 indexes from the aspects of organizational benefits, membership benefits, internal governance, development potential and social impact, as the basis of performance evaluation index system of specialized farmers cooperatives. After determining the weights of all indexes with subjectivity of Analytic Hicrarchy Process（AHP）, the paper ranks and evaluates the performance of the 40 sample cooperatives investigated in Ganzhou, Jiangxi Province by the performance evaluation index system. Then, it uses factor analysis to test the system. Then, this chapter compares the differences in organizational forms, behavior characteristics and economic performance of three different ownership types of cooperatives, and summarizes the internal relations of them. On the analysis of the structure system's influence performance of cooperatives, this chapter analyses the system factors of specialized farmers cooperatives' performance from aspects of both property rights structure and technology transaction structure based on the survey 007 data of 72 sample cooperatives. On the analysis of the relationship between the system structure, trading environment and the cooperative performance, this chapter analyzes the influence of both system structure and trading environment on specialized farmers cooperatives' performance using 102 sample cooperatives' survey data.

Chapter 8 is the international experience and enlightenment from the development model of specialized farmers cooperatives. This chapter comprehensively studies the agricultural development model in France, Japan and the United States and other typical developed countries. It analyses, compares and outlines their characteristics in organizational structure, main business and operational mode. Then based on these successful experiences, it puts forward some enlightenment to the development of specialized farmers cooperatives in China.

Chapter 9 is the conclusions and policy recommendations. This chapter summarizes the main conclusions of the whole book, and combining with these research findings, it puts forward corresponding counter-measures from the aspects of the internal institutional arrangements, the external institutional environment, the quality improvement of members, the joint between the organizations, and the government guidance by classification.

Keywords: Specialized Farmers Cooperatives; SSCP Paradigm;Ownership Structure; Contract Selection; Performance Evaluation