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Credit unions offer an alternative to traditional banking given their distinctive ownership structure and their goal of maximising members’ benefits. Motivated by the increased expectations regarding more ethical behaviour in the financial industry, this paper aims to provide a better understanding of the relevant features and values that facilitated the emergence of the credit union movement in Australia.

Using social movement theory, this study analyses 23 interviews conducted in the early 1990s with the supporters of the credit union movement in Australia, in which the characteristics and values of the credit union movement are identified.

Findings demonstrate that the credit union ethos is rooted in family and religious influences, and that these organisations were keen on promoting their distinctiveness on “fairness” and “caring for their members”. Credit unions, however, have rarely tackled the movement’s most neglected value “cooperation between cooperatives”.

This research contributes to the discussion of ethics in business history as it elaborates on how values and ethos crafted the identity and ensured the survival of the credit union movement in Australia.

This paper aims to evaluate the relation between governance and financial efficiency of credit unions in Brazil. The study shows how poor financial efficiency in credit unions may result from undesirable configurations in executive management and other variables related to governance.

The study develops an innovative methodology to classify credit unions according to the level of governance using indicators of representativeness and participation, leadership, management and supervision. This methodology integrates the use of multiple correspondence and cluster analysis. The study then applies stochastic frontier models to analyze how governance affects the indicators of financial efficiency.

The results highlight that better governance substantially increases the efficiency of credit unions in terms of a higher level of credit operations per institution.

The paper uses a pioneering survey applied by the Central Bank to almost the total population of credit unions in Brazil. The results highlight how to operationalize a subjective and broad concept related to cooperative governance to identify the remarkable impacts of good governance practices on the financial efficiency of credit unions.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the efficiency in financial intermediation and the cost efficiency in banking service of credit unions in Brazil, based on essentially accounting variables, and to analyze the temporal evolution of the efficiency of these cooperatives.

With a sample of 315 cooperatives over the period from 2007 to 2014, this research uses a two-stage process: application of regression models with panel data to verify which variables are related to the defined outputs, with the reduction of 31 variables to 8 variables in both models; and application of the data envelopment analysis method to obtain an analysis of credit unions’ efficiency.

The results demonstrate a high level of efficiency in financial intermediation, with low variation over time, associated with a low efficiency in the banking service, in which few cooperatives have remained efficient over time. In addition, the cooperatives with highest efficiency in financial intermediation were also the most efficient in providing services.

This research has some limitations about the capacity of the proxies used to capture the real effect of the variables and assumptions of economic relations resulting in restrictions to generalize the results.

Cooperatives are usually analyzed under just one dimension. By separating the analysis into financial intermediation and banking services, cooperatives that are more efficient in each dimension can be identified, in addition to analyzing the evolution over time. The authors found that efficiency tends to be lower in banking services, and few cooperatives remain at the highest level of efficiency over time in both models.

Credit unions provide an important service in the banking and credit market. Therefore, understanding its operation and the characteristics that influence its efficiency allows a better management of the cooperatives themselves and a greater understanding of this important segment of the financial market.

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 particular characteristics of agri-food cooperatives reduce their ability to access external financial resources. The purpose of this paper is to explore the factors influencing the agri-food cooperatives' trade credit operations by measuring their accounts receivable and comparing the results with agri-food investor-owned firms (IOFs).

The authors apply a partial adjustment model (PAM) estimated using a dynamic panel model with a two-step general method of moments (GMM) estimator to a sample of 11,930 Spanish agri-food cooperatives and IOFs for the period 2011–2018.

The study concludes that cooperatives and IOFs have an accounts receivable target, which they attempt to achieve rapidly. Cooperatives tend to behave as IOFs do, but they present lower adjustment coefficients. This difference seems to be explained by the unique characteristics of cooperatives which set different economic and social goals, not just profit maximization as IOFs. The findings show differences between the financial and commercial purposes of the cooperatives and IOFs as a result of their internal management policies. Larger cooperatives with access to external financial sources, positive cash flows and operational necessities will grant trade credit.

This study gives interesting implications for cooperative managers and policymakers to help them to understand the strategies behind trade credit policies. Previous empirical studies on the agri-food sector are scarce and focus on IOFs without considering the role of trade credit in European cooperatives.

Lack of access to finance is one of the major contributing to low profitability in agriculture. Various policy interventions were performed for promoting access to finance. However, access to finance always remained one of the biggest challenges to Indian policymakers. The purpose of this paper is to explore the policy interventions in the areas of agriculture finance.

This paper makes an attempt to explore the relation of earlier policy initiatives with the current microfinance industry as well. The data for the paper are collected from Reserve Bank of India Archive Museum at Pune. This Museum is having huge collection of archives of policy documents of the Indian financial sector and is one of its kinds in India.

The study concludes that many of the interventions of today were earlier experimented or proposed in the past but, due to some or the other reason those, interventions were not successful. The study concludes that if those interventions had been implemented that time, it would have taken India in one of the tops in the list of financial inclusion.

This paper is a unique in its feature as it has tried to link the evolution of agriculture finance and the microfinance industry of India as microfinance is an integral part of agricultural finance in India.

The goal of this study was to determine the impact of access to credit facilities on financial performance among farmers of cooperative societies. The study also tested the predictive power of financial literacy.

The descriptive survey research design was used for the study while the sample size was 240 farmers of cooperative societies from South-East Nigeria. The farmers were categorised into those with access to credit facilities and those without access to credit facilities. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data for the study. Data were analysed using multiple analyses of variance (MANOVA) and multiple regression analysis.

Farmers with access to credit facilities reported higher financial performance such as return on investment, working capital, net profit, profit margin and sales. However, those without access to credit facilities reported lower mean scores on financial performance. Also, financial literacy, like financial knowledge, attitude and awareness, significantly predicts the impact of access to credit facilities on financial performance. It was also found that the duration of repayment of credit facilities, like medium and long term, contributes more to improving financial performance.

This study has shown that even though access to credit facilities impacts financial performance, financial literacy is an important consideration. Also, the duration of repayment is a crucial factor.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a review of major historical developments in agricultural finance, with particular emphasis on agricultural credit. It reviews the development of Raiffeisen and related banks that emerged in Germany and Europe throughout the nineteenth century and how the cooperative banking system made its way into the banking system of the USA in the early twentieth century. The paper emphasizes the role of the state in the developing of agricultural credit, especially with respect to farm mortgages, securitization, and bond structures.

This paper presents a historical synthesis of historical literature on agricultural credit.

This paper shows the direct linkage between the developments in Raiffeisen credit cooperatives and the Farm Credit System (FCS) and details the emergence of the land banks, farm credit banks, agricultural bonds and the role of joint-stock banks in agricultural credit policy.

In total, 2016 marks the 100th anniversary of the passing of the 1916 Federal Farm Loan Act which set in motion the USs’ first Government Sponsored Enterprise and catalyzed the formation of the FCS as it operates today to provide credit to farmers and rural communities on a cooperative basis. Although there are a few wonderful books written on certain aspects of the FCS the story of how the FCS was initiated and the many struggles it faced up to the 1933 Act has not been told often enough. This paper tells the story of the evolution of agricultural credit that ultimately led to the formation of the FCS.

This research analyzes the determinants of the financial sustainability of the cooperative savings and credit sector in Peru.

The econometric analysis uses a balanced data panel with a sample of 34 savings and credit cooperatives in Peru for the period 2010–2017. The estimates were considered using the static fixed-effects model to assess the financial sustainability.

The results show that the interest rate differential, the number of years of activity, the size of assets and the return on assets are explanatory variables of the financial sustainability of savings and credit cooperatives in Peru.

This research promotes reflection and discussion for the design of policies that improve the level of competition for the Peruvian savings and credit cooperative model, based on the level of financial sustainability.

This study is one of the first to identify the determinants of the financial sustainability of the savings and credit cooperative sector in Peru.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-01-2022-0064

Recently, the Indian Congress asked a distinguished committee of experts to analyze and make policy recommendations about India's Cooperative Financial Institutions (CFIs), which included organizations such as credit unions and cooperative banks. One committee member, Mohan R. Narayan, a leading economist at a prestigious Indian university, was enthusiastic about the job; it was an opportunity to help millions of rural poor and to have a positive effect on the country. Some poor farmers, deeply in debts to money-lenders, had been reported to resort to committing suicide when they faced with draught or other catastrophes and saw little reason to continue living. Well-functioning CFIs would certainly help restore hope and boost income for the rural poor. But he knew the system had a long history of overregulation, financial laxity, and corruption. Creating an actionable and clear strategy would be no easy task. The case, written at the invitation of the World Bank to study the challenges of building inclusive financial system in emerging countries, invites students to discuss 1) The roles and responsibilities of financial institutions in poverty-reduction and economic development, 2) the benefits and risks of using public versus private institutions to aid development, and more specifically, 3) the economics of credit cooperatives—in particular how they function in an emerging market setting.