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Using bank-level data over the 1994–2015 period, the authors aim to investigate the role of bank-specific factors on credit risk in Italy by considering two different groups of banks, namely, cooperative and non-cooperative (commercial and popular), in different local markets.

Relying on highly territorially disaggregated data at labour market areas’ level, the authors estimate the impact of the role of bank-specific factors on credit risk in Italy from the estimation of a fixed-effect estimator. Non-performing loans to total loans has been used as a proxy of credit risk; the bank-specific factors are as follows: growth of loans, reflecting credit policy; log of total assets, controlling for banks’ size; loans to total assets, reflecting the volume of credit market; equity to total assets, capturing the solvency of banks and reflecting their capital strength; return on assets, reflecting the profitability of banks; deposits to loans, reflecting the intermediation cost; cost of total assets, reflecting the banks’ efficiency or volume of intermediation cost.

The empirical findings suggest that regulatory credit policy, capitalisation, volume of credit and volume of intermediation costs are the main bank-specific factors affecting non-performing loans. Nevertheless, the present analysis suggests that the behaviour of cooperative banks’ behaviour seems to be in line with that of commercial rather than popular banks, casting doubts about the feasibility of their credit policies. It turns out that recent reforms involving popular and cooperative banks represent the first step toward the enhancement of the stability and efficiency of the Italian banking system. While the present study’s benchmark results are not particularly affected by the degree of competition in the banking sector and by banks’ size, it shows that both cooperative and non-cooperative banks have undertaken more prudent credit policies after the advent of the financial crisis and the introduction of the Basel regulation.

The relationship between bank-specific factors and credit risk has been analysed using a rich sample of cooperative, commercial and popular banks in Italy over the 1994–2015 period. The authors rely on labour market areas being sub-regional geographical areas where the bulk of the labour force lives and works. The contribution is motivated by the financial distress experienced after the 2008 financial crisis, which has significantly hit the Italian banking system and cooperative banks in particular.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the performance of banking institutions in Costa Rica over the period 2004–2014.

This paper employs system GMM, dynamic panel data and traditional financial hypothesis framework to analyze bank performance and assess marketplace sustainability for a sample of commercial and cooperative banks from Costa Rica. In the assessment, the authors visit the relative market power, structure conduct performance (SCP) and efficient structure literature.

Market share (MS) is positively related to performance whereas the authors find a negative effect of market concentration (Herfindahl–Hirschman index) on bank profits, thereby refuting the SCP hypothesis. The authors accept the “quiet life” hypothesis within Costa Rican banks since a moderate level of profit persistence is detected. Commercial banks are less profitable. Yet when crisis is introduced to the models, it has a significant and negative impact on overall bank performance.

The authors selected years and banks based on available data plus default information in the relevant database. More insights can be gained from post-2014 developments.

The current results and conclusions have implications for developing economies (and economic development, in general) by showing that the traditional understanding of cooperative bank model as better for the public good may not be necessarily true. They offer insight into the understanding of how different bank-type institutions affect the public good. Furthermore, expanding the research to Latin America in order to directly compare commercial and cooperative enterprises via a meta-frontier technique would help buttress this evidence.

This is the most recent study to provide such an investigation for a Latin American country with a sizable MS for cooperative and public sector banks. The paper offers analysis that has been limited in Latin American banking markets thus far.

The purpose of this paper is to measure the impact of financial inclusion on rural development through cooperatives.

The primary data were collected from 540 beneficiaries of Cooperatives banks operating in three northern states of India, i.e., J&K, Himachal Pradesh and Punjab using purposive sampling during January to June 2016. Exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, ANOVA, t-test and structural equation modelling were used for scale purification and data analysis.

The findings of the study revealed that financial inclusion through cooperatives has direct and significant impact on rural development. Further, the results support the notion that financial inclusion is a strategy of inclusive growth, but inclusive growth itself is a subset of a larger set of inclusive development which means that the benefit must reach the all, particularly the women and the children, minority groups, the extremely poor and those pushed below the poverty line by natural and human-made disasters.

The research has certain inescapable limitations. First, the in-depth analysis of the study is restricted to three northern states of India only because of time and resource constraints. Second, the study is confined to the perception of financial inclusion beneficiaries only, which in future could be carried further on the perception of other stakeholders such as SHGs, banking correspondents, etc. Third, possibility of subjective interpretation in some cases cannot be ruled out.

The study makes contribution towards financial inclusion literature relating to sustainable rural development and fulfils the research gap to some extent by assessing the impact of financial inclusion on rural development through cooperatives.

This paper aims to analyze the relationship between bank institutional setting and risk-taking by exploring whether board education and turnover are drivers of the risk propensity of cooperative banks compared to joint-stock banks.

Based on a comprehensive data set of Italian banks over the 2011-2017 period, this paper examines whether these board characteristics affect the risk propensity of cooperative and joint-stock banks. Bank risk is measured by the Z-index, profit volatility and the ratio of non-performing loans to total gross loans.

The findings show that cooperatives take less risk than joint-stock banks and have lower board turnover and education. Furthermore, this study finds that while board education mediates the relationship between the cooperative model and bank risk-taking, there is no evidence for board turnover. Thus, the lower educational level of cooperative directors contributes to explaining the lower risk-taking of cooperative banks.

The findings have several implications. In terms of the more general policy debate, the results point to the need to strengthen the governance model for both joint-stock and cooperative banks while supporting the view that a more ad hoc perspective on the best models and practices for each type of institutional setting would be preferable. In particular, the study reveals how board education’s effects on bank risk-taking should be carefully monitored.

Through a mediation framework, this study provides empirical evidence on the relationship between bank institutional setting (by distinguishing between cooperative and joint-stock banks) and risk-taking behavior by exploring the underlying mechanisms at the board level, which is novel in the literature.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of financial inclusion on poverty alleviation through cooperative banks.

In order to fulfil the objectives of the study, primary data were collected from 540 beneficiaries of cooperative banks operating in three northern states of India, i.e., J&K, Himachal Pradesh (HP) and Punjab using purposive sampling during July-December 2015. The technique of factor analysis had been used for summarisation of the total data into minimum factors. For checking the validity and reliability of the data, the second-order CFA was performed. Statistical techniques like one-way ANOVA, t-test and SEM were used for data analysis.

The study results reveal that financial inclusion through cooperative banks has a direct and significant impact on poverty alleviation. The study highlights that access to basic financial services such as savings, loans, insurance, credit, etc., through financial inclusion has generated a positive impact on the lives of the poor and help them to come out of the clutches of poverty.

The study was conducted amidst few limitations. First, the in-depth analysis of the study is restricted to three northern states only because of limited resources and time availability. Second, the study is limited to the perception of financial inclusion beneficiaries only, which, in future, could be carried further on the perception of other stakeholders such as bank officials, business correspondents, village panchayats, etc.

The study makes contribution towards the financial inclusion literature relating to poverty alleviation and fulfils the research gap to some extent by assessing the impact of financial inclusion on poverty alleviation through cooperative banks. This paper can help the policymakers and other stakeholders of cooperative banks in promoting banking habits among poor rural households both at the national and international level.

This paper aims to search for the factors that influence the profitability of Greek commercial and cooperative banks by examining other variables that have never been used before. It also seeks to examine bank performance before and during the economic crisis in Greece. The survey is based on previous similar research.

A multiple regression analysis has been used for the determination of the factors which influence the profitability of the Greek banking sector as well as the multicriteria method PROMETHEE for the examination of the Greek banking sector performance before (2007) and during the economic recession (2008‐2009).

The paper finds that: type of bank plays an important role in profitability; the indicator ROA is associated only with well‐capitalized banks with sufficient liquidity and cost efficiency; and cooperative banks in general at the beginning of the crisis were less influenced by the economic crisis than commercial banks.

This is the first time that the entire Greek banking system has been examined for the particular period regarding the factors that influence bank profitability. Up to now there has been no published research examining whether the type of the bank influences profitability or which of banks remained efficient and “durable” before and during the first two years of the economic crisis in Greece.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the total factor productivity (TFP) change in the Greek cooperative banking industry over the period 2000‐2005.

The paper employs the Malmquist index and estimate two models, one based on the intermediation approach, and one based on the production approach. TFP change is disaggregated into technical efficiency change and technological change, whereas technical efficiency change is decomposed further into pure technical efficiency change and scale efficiency change.

The results are mixed. The first model indicates a small decrease (3 per cent) in TFP whereas the second model indicates an increase by 6.6 per cent. Comparing the results on the basis of banks' size finds that TFP growth is higher for smaller banks on average over the entire period of our analysis. However, this relationship between size and productivity is not robust across the years. Furthermore, the differences between the groups are not statistically significant.

The results can be of special interest to several stakeholders such as customers‐members, bank managers, local community, and of course bank regulators.

This paper is believed to be the first that examines the productivity growth of Greek cooperative banks.

Most research into the relationship between social capital and cooperatives takes social capital as the independent variable and the cooperative as the dependent variable, but as yet the authors know little about causality in the other direction. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the cooperative structure helps to maintain organizational social capital.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 46 participants from local banks (chairpersons, directors, managers, team leaders and human resources managers).

Although the cooperative structure formally remained in place, integration into financial markets and digitalization effectively disembedded the organization from its original social context. The cooperative model can only remain distinctive, in terms of how it relates to its clients, under certain institutional conditions.

The findings suggest that scaling, in response to changes in the institutional environment, was an important factor in changing the nature of the organization.

The paper contributes to the understanding of the social dynamics of cooperatives in the field of financial services.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the history of the Dutch cooperative Rabobank to understand how the structure of an organisation determines how individual employees validate norms within that organisation.

Data over an approximately 10-year period starting 25 years ago are analysed, and the value of relating a historical analysis and narrative approach to ethical and institutional theories in economics and management science is demonstrated.

Regulation in the banking sector appears to have a strong normative aspect. The choice between state and private ownership is based on ideology. The author argues that the private ownership model was based primarily on an ideology surrounding economic efficiency, but that in fact there are other logics that also promote economic development. This contributes to the understanding of the interaction between sector standards, organisational structures and the values of organisations and individual employees. The structure of an organisation enables key employees to deviate slightly from the organisation’s prevailing norms in response to pressures from the wider environment, and those individuals thereby become symbols of that organisation.

The perspective on management history put forward in this paper enables assessing the distinction between normative notions in institutional environments and the organisation as a whole as represented in its governance structure and narratives that key employees disseminate about the organisation. This in turn helps us to understand the interaction between sector standards, organisational characteristics and values represented by individual employees. The author reveals the strong normative impact of banking regulation in line with an older ideological model focused on economic efficiency rather than market logics and the interests of society.

The aftermath of the subprime mortgage crisis has accelerated a pre‐existing process of ethical approach in the banking industry. Today, all banks claim to be socially, environmentally and economically committed with the philosophy of sustainable finance. The purpose of this paper is to show that, beyond the outward similarities, there are three different types of banking approach, each reflecting a distinct business model: banks whose ethical/social approach is mainly based on what they say, represented by universal banks; banks whose ethical/social approach is based on what they are, essentially the co‐operative banks; banks whose ethical/social approach is based on what they do, the so‐called ethical banks.

The paper bases its argument on the German banking industry, which is a big European country with a fairly diversified banking sector. The paper examines three types of sources for each of the above‐mentioned categories of banks: the social and environmental reporting, the conformity or not with the principles of the social and solidarity‐based economy and the different types of financial activities as reflected in their balance sheet.

The paper concludes that more ethical behaviour leads to both economic performance and social gains which increase wealth for all partners.

The proposed methodology could be extended to other European banking systems to discuss their implications as regards corporate social responsibility.

This contribution will help the reader to evaluate banking communication as regards corporate social responsibility in their daily activity.

This research will give an insight based on the documents published by banking institutions to measure their implication on corporate social responsibility.