Are cooperatives more virtuous than corporations?

There are several sectors of the economy in which cooperatives have flourished, competing successfully against standard business corporations. The best explanation for their success is that they provide superior benefits to their members. The question addressed by this paper is whether cooperatives also provide important benefits to society, such that non-members should prefer a cooperative economy to one dominated by business corporations. It has often been suggested that cooperatives are more virtuous because they are more democratic, less hierarchical, less anti-social and less apt to produce economic inequality. This paper evaluates these claims. The central challenge stems from the observation that cooperatives are not nearly as different from corporations as is commonly assumed.