The behavior and performance of credit cooperatives: An analysis of cooperative governance rules.

摘要

Governments and donors have intensely promoted credit cooperatives with the objective of improving access to financial services by marginal clientele in developing countries. Nevertheless, these organizations have been financially unstable, very vulnerable to minor changes in their environment, and highly dependent upon external subsidies.; This dissertation provides a theoretical explanation for these empirical regularities regarding the performance of credit cooperatives in developing countries. In particular, it examines the conventional institutional design of a credit cooperative. The underlying idea is that the standard mode of cooperative allocation of property rights--including voting--is what determines, in the last instance, who--and under what incentives--gets to define the organization's policies. This influence takes place through the role of the property rights structure in contests for control of the organization's assets.; The dissertation adapts a model of contests for corporate control developed by Harris and Raviv, in order to consider the particular institutional design of credit cooperatives. The model characterizes the outcome of any tournament for the control of a credit cooperative's assets. It is shown that the conventional institutional design of credit cooperatives determines the winner of such contests.; The predictions of the Harris and Raviv model are used to explain several empirical regularities about the behavior and performance of credit cooperatives that, until now, have not been satisfactorily resolved. The model postulates that credit cooperatives will always be borrower-dominated; that they would not endogenously appear without the intervention of an external agent willing to finance borrower domination; that the regulation of credit cooperatives as financial intermediaries is particularly difficult given a sub-optimal amount of internal control; and that any attempts to redesign these intermediaries, aimed at improving their sustainability, would require severe departures from cooperative philosophy.; The dissertation reconciles the empirical record of the German Cooperative Banking Group and of the credit unions in the United States with the predictions of the model. It is claimed that their record of financial stability is consistent with the prediction that the viability of credit cooperatives requires a complex regulatory infrastructure, such as those that supervise these two groups of cooperatives.