To the best of our knowledge, only few recent European studies (Baros and
Santos, 2007; Sergaki and Semos, 2006) with a focus on performance contrast
agricultural cooperatives and private food firms. For example, Baros and
Santos (2007) apply benchmark analysis to Portuguese wine producers to
detect differences in efficiency between cooperatives and private firms. The
evidence shows that differences in resources (management practices,
distribution networks, etc.) allow wine cooperatives to reach higher efficiency
levels compared to private wine firms.