Title: The Economic History of Credit Cooperatives

Contact Information: Timothy W. Guinnane, Department of Economics, Yale University, P.O. Box 208269, New Haven CT 06520-8269. Email: timothy.guinnane@yale.edu. Fax: 203-432-3898.

Other Organizers: Francesco Galassi (Warwick)

Description: The past few years have seen a growth in interest in the economic history of credit cooperatives, both in Europe and in the United States. Changes recently undergone by financial intermediaries in response to sectoral and geographic shifts have created a strong new interest in the experience of credit cooperatives in the past century and a-half. Several distinct sources of interest can be identified. We should stress that our aim is to include papers on credit cooperatives from around the world, and that we will not restrict our interest only to success stories: in fact, studying examples of failures of credit cooperatives will constitute an important aim of the session. The temporal focus will be the period 1850-1940, when most credit cooperative systems were put into place.

Participants: The session organizers have selected 7 papers from the many reactions to their earlier call for papers. These papers will be presented at the 2002 session in Buenos Aires.

The paper givers are:

1. Aidan Hollis (University of Calgary) and Aruthur Sweetman (Queens University-Kingston), "The Irish Loan Funds."
2. Angel Pascual Martinez Soto (University of Murcia), "The Spanish Credit Cooperative System."
3. Toader Ionescu and Crina Petrescu (Dimitrie Catemir University, Cluj-Napoca, Rumania), "The Development of the Rumanian Credit Cooperatives."
4. Paul Brusse (Research Institute for History and Culture, Faculty of Arts, University of Utrecht, the Netherlands), "Credit Cooperatives in the Dutch Delta 1902-2002 (1940)."
5. Veronique Fillieux (Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium), "Credit cooperatives and home-ownership: the case of Belgium, 1880-1930."
6. Michael Moller (Department of Finance, Copenhagen Business School) and Niels-Henrik Topp (Institute of Political Science,University of Copenhagen), "Danish Credit Unions: Why Were They So Big - and Why Did They Matter So Little."
7. Giuseppe Conti (University of Pisa) and Giovanni Ferri (University of Bari), "Crisis, Performance, and Board Stability. Were cooperative banks special in interwar Italy?"
8. Lidmila Nemcova (University of Economics, Prague, Czech Republic), "Credit Cooperatives in the Czech lands in the 19th century"
9. Nahum Karlinsky (Ben-Gurion Research Center, Ben-Gurion University), "Between Socialist Cooperatives and Private Enterprise Cooperatives: Credit Cooperatives in Mandatory Palestine"

Further information will be available soon.

Timothy Guinnane, Professor of Economics, Yale University. On Leave 2000-2001, Russell Sage Foundation: 112 E 64th Street, New York NY 10021.