Pricing and dividend policies in open credit cooperatives

This paper develops an integrated model of pricing and dividend policies in open credit cooperatives (those that do business with members and non-members on a non-discriminatory basis). We show that both the distribution of member preferences and the amount of non-member business the cooperative does influence its optimal pricing and dividend policies. For a fixed distribution of member preferences, the larger the fraction of business done by members, the smaller the optimal dividend and the larger the optimal pricing subsidy (hence, increasing demand). On the other hand, for a fixed fraction of member business, the greater the skewness of member preferences toward loan (deposit) business with the credit cooperative, the larger the optimal dividend and the higher (lower) the optimal loan (deposit) interest rate. Aggregate empirical evidence from the German cooperative banking sector supports a version of the latter prediction, namely, that in an increasingly depositor-dominated open credit cooperative, average deposit rates tend to fall as dividend payouts rise.