Analysis of transaction costs in milk production cooperatives in western Santa Catarina

Abstract

In the present study, we sought to discuss a methodological proposal suitable to studies about transaction costs. Besides the theoretical framework and methodological tools, we describe here the case study, on which the proposal is used. The empirical universe of study was the Western Santa Catarina, focused on the cooperatives of milk production chain. We discussed about transaction costs in three perspectives, namely, frequency, assets specificity and uncertainties, in which we included the confidence as a relevant variable for the study. We also used the assumptions as variables, and we showed a scale of semantic differential, which allowed us determining indices able to highlight important comparative results. We found that assets specificity showed a significant effect in the transaction costs increase. In addition, the confidence and frequency caused reduction of transaction costs. The prices paid in the year of 2010 were lesser on the cooperatives that showed greater transaction costs, showing strong correlation. However, the competition resulted in increase of transaction costs, which prejudiced the cooperatives competitiveness. Therefore, the methodological and theoretical proposals can be used in another case studies.