Cooperative Market Power and Antitrust with Application to California Information-Sharing Cooperatives

Agricultural cooperatives are often considered to be "countervailers" of market power. That is, the presence of a cooperative in a market may stimulate more competitive behavior from other market participants. This view of cooperatives has its roots in midwestern U.S. agriculture and is most often associated with Edwin Nourse (1922), although the framers of the Capper-Volstead Act of 1922 also embraced the concept. To the extent cooperatives perform this function, they create a social benefit.