Assessing the co-operative's impact on people's well-being and community development: the case study of Coppalj, a co-operative located in Maranhão State, Brazil

Sara Vicari and Pasquale De Muro

No 158, Departmental Working Papers of Economics - University 'Roma Tre' from Department of Economics - University Roma Tre

Abstract: After years of preconceptions about co-operatives in developing countries, scholars and international institutions have re-evaluated their role particularly in poverty reduction strategies. Crucial condition is that co-operatives are considered as genuine, authentically participatory enterprises. Here, investigating how these peculiar enterprises affect people’s well-being and contribute to institutional transformation of communities emerges of crucial importance. The paper, by showing the results of a case study, carried out in the Maranhão State through a field research, provides a methodology to evaluate the genuineness of the co-operative and its impact on people’s well-being and community development. Adopted methodology entails quantitative and participatory methods and, based on the Human Development and Capability Approach (HDCA) framework, it provides a multidimensional analysis of poverty. In such a way, this methodology aims at contributing to overcoming the evaluation of co-operative performance based only on monetary indicators, enhancing the concrete contribution that co-operatives can bring to human development and poverty reduction.

Keywords: co-operatives; human development and capability approach (HDCA); propensity score matching; participatory methods; Brazil (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O15 O54 P13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hme
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rtr:wpaper:0158

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