| At the end of 70s of the 20th century, the establishment of the household contract responsibility system set up the family as the relatively independent main unit of agricultural production. On the one hand, farmers are established as the micro-economic subject. This provided the famers with an effective incentive and became one of the important influencing factorsin promoting agricultural growth and agricultural technological progress; On the other hand, decentralized, self-losses of agricultural production and management mechanisms will also place the farmers in the market competition and face market risks independently. Farmers show innate weakness in the market:not only the poor ability to take risks and to improve China's agricultural productivity, but also the weakness in coping with the competition in the domestic market and the intensive international competition since China's accession to the WTO. This production mode can not adapt to the agricultural industrilization and marketization development in China. The contradiction of small producers and large markets is becoming more and more striking.In the middle of the 80s in the 20th century, farmer specialized cooperatives were set up in china, which is on the basis of the rural household land contract system. Changing the agricultural production mode from family-centuralization, the cooperatives combine the farmers who are in the samilar agricultural production to engage in scale production and provide a wide range of services, such as product processing, product sales, market information, technical exchanges, and so on. There are a number of specialized cooperatives organized the farmers work integrately and create their own brand and face the market together. They are more effective in helping the scattered and small-scaled farmers in adapting to the large markets and play and important role in structural adjustment in agriculture, in increasing farmers income and agricultural efficiency. In recent years, the change of statistical data about the total number of farmer specialized cooperatives has been slow down. This shows that the development of farmer special cooperatives is changing from the quantity increase to the integration of scale and improvement of efficiency.It's necessary that the theoretical research keep pace with the development of the practice. Although the domestic theoretical research on farmers specialized cooperatives is increasing gradually, because of the short history of development, most of them focus more on the research and interpretation on the basic principles of cooperation, the relationship between specialization and cooperation, the role and status of cooperatives in agricultural industrialization, its relationship with the government and relevant legal issues. There are a lot of problems in the integration of farmer specialized cooperatives need to be solved. The concept of different types of cooperatives need to be defined furtherly, studies on the system to be done, and analysis on the motives of various types of cooperatives to be made.The development of new Institutional Economics provides a good tool to study farmer specialized cooperatives. But now, the domestic works studying the farmer specialized cooperatives remains to be further enriched that combines China's actual conditions with neo-institutional theories.In this paper, the neo-institutional economics theories and methods are used to study the institutional arrangements and changes of China's farmer specialized cooperatives. Transactional cost theories, property rights theories, the logic of collective action and the classic game model are applied to analyze the following: Why do Chinese farmers will spontaneously set up specialized cooperatives? In what kind of external conditions will the farmer specialized cooperatives develope? Why it appeared such characteristics that different types of farmer specialized cooperative occupied the mainstream in different periods. What are the essential differences and boundaries between various types of farmer specialized cooperatives? What are their scale boundaries? What is the trend that shows in the development of farmer specialized cooperatives? And how is the impact of the government? In addition, this paper also focuses on the property rights of farmer specialized cooperatives. There are a lot of studies have pointed out that the ambiguous property rights are institutional defects of farmer specialized cooperatives.With such defects, how could the farmer specialized cooperatives develop so widely and quickly? Under what conditions do the property rights need to be clearly defined? Throuth what kind of institutions can the defects be made up in practice? Is there any space for the further development of the farmer specialized cooperatives in the future?There are seven chapters in this paper. Chapter 1 Introduction. On the basis of introducing the research background, the foundation of choosing this topic and sorting out the development and changes, this chapter makes necessary explaination on various types of farmer specialized cooperatives in present Chinese rural area and defines the meaning and form of "farmer specialized cooperative" in practice. Chapter 2 Review and summary on theory. It reviews the the theoretical research results both domestic and abroad and iritruduces the status of current research:The foreign research results are classified according to the development of cooperative theory. The representative theories under the influence of new-classical and neo-institutional economics are introduced more detailed. Domestic research is introduced according to the perspective and contents. On the above basis, brief commentary on the progress and shortcomings of the cooperative theories domestic and foreign are given in this chapter.Chapter 3 The engender and current situation of Chinese farmer specialized cooperatives. In the neo-institutional economics framework, with transactional cost theory, this chapter analyzes the supervision in agricultural production, the evaluation in the trade of agricultural products and transactional costs caused by the post-contractual opportunistic behavior and propose that saving transaction costs is the main reason why cooperatives are developed in agriculture.Transactional costs in China's agricultural market is great because of the distinct characteristics of Chines agriculture. The land averagely contracted according to the population makes the smallest agricultural producing scale; the huge number of farmer formes a market with the most subjects; and the household contract responsibility system and the far seperated land determin the dispersion of Chinese agricultural production. It is precisely because of these reasons that farmer specialized cooperatives set up spontaneously by Chinese farmers developed so quickly. This chapter introduces the industry distribution and size of cooperatives, and especially the current status quo in Liaoning Provinces. From the history and current situation of farmer specialized cooperative, the main form appeared to be professional associations in the embryonic stage, and gradually to be the specialized cooperative and joint-stock cooperative later.Chapter 4 Analysis on the property rights of China's farmer specialized cooperative. Property rights are the core of the institutions and the basis on which people make decisions. Cost need to be payed and profits be gained in defining property rights. It is generally considered in the research abroad that the ambigious property rights makes the cooperative the organization with low efficiency. The farmer specialized cooperatives are innovatively divided into private property rights ones and public property rights ones in this chapter according to the property rights theory. Characteristics and structures of these two kinds of organizations. Through these analyses, it proposes that the control of members under different property rights is different. The cost in maintaining the control to the members of cooperative is also the cost in maintaining the property rights, that is, the cost of property rights. China's farmer specialized cooperatives have their own unique design of property rights on the basis of basic principles of cooperation. The analysis of public accumulation, the system of distribution based on the roles of members, the system of membership and the efficiency of the above.Chapter 5 Analysis on the factors that cause the vicissitudes of farmer specialized cooperative. The purpose of this chapter is to attempt to identify the factors of the vicissitudes of farmer specialized cooperative and its boundary. The analysis followed the premise that the production, innovation, and being replaced of the institution is under the driving of the potential gains to the subjects. There are internal and external factors (the government) that cause the vicissitudes of the institutions of China's farmer specialized cooperatives. The reason why cooperatives be the orientation of spontaneous institutional vicissitude is that it has potential profit which is reflected in saving transactional costs. Of course, at the same time, it also takes cost in organizing. Potential profits from the deduction of potential benefits and the cost, that is, the reasons for the vicissitude of farmer specialized cooperative. The vicissitude is reflected on the changes of quantity and size. In this chapter, first of all. a model of transactional cost is built to analyze the institutional benefit from the point of view of institutional cost and benefit of farmers specialized cooperative. Then after its internal institutional cost is studied, an equilibrium analysis on the cost and benefit is conducted. The fact that farmer makes decision whether to set up cooperatives or not on considering both institutional cost-benefit, and personal cost, which may be changed by external forces-the impact of the Government. Theoretically the impact may be the influence on demand and supply of institutions. Supportive policies are commonly found in the experience and current situation abroad. There is analysis on the reason for this phenomenon in this chapter.Chapter 6 Analysis on the trend of China's farmer specialized cooperative. On the basis of analyzing factors of institutional vicissitude, the characteristics in the development and current stitution of farmer specialized cooperative is studied in this chapter, and as well as the changing of cooperatives. It proposes the idea that the "stockholder-power-centered" of control tends to show in the development of institutional design; the scale of farmer specialized cooperative tends to transversal all-in-one; industrial chain extends advanced and backward and tends to be vertical integration. Cases are used to explain the impact on the integration of cooperatives from the government.Chapter 7 Brief conclusions. This chapter is a summary of the whole paper. At the premise and conditions proposed in Chapter 1 and through the analysis in the earlier chapters, ten conclusive judgement about the development of China's farmer specialized cooperatives are drawn in this chapter, which is looked forward to show prospects of cooperatives theoretically.
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