EXPERIMENTATION AND OPTIMAL OUTPUT DECISIONS - THE COOPERATIVE VERSUS THE ENTREPRENEURIAL FIRM

This paper studies and contrasts the experimental inclinations of entrepreneurial and cooperative firms supplying a perishable good under uncertain demand, when larger stocks might yield additional information about the demand-generating process. While these firms might react differently, and in the case of the cooperative not unambiguously, to environmental change, neither variant will find the higher output-possibly more informative-option especially attractive.