This paper attempted to test whether efficient cooperative rural banks (CRBs) have a better control of their agency costs. We used two different concepts of efficiency, namely, cost efficiency and alternative profit efficiency, and found somewhat different results from both approaches. Using...

The purpose of this paper is to perform a cross-country survey of the level of integration of systems of financial cooperatives (FC) and its effect on measures of performance. We develop a classification scheme based on a theoretical framework that builds on published work using transaction cost...

In this paper we study the relationship that exists between ownership and governance structure of depository institutions (DI) on one side, and the dominant cause of failure on the other. Extant theory implies that while in stock owned DI where management is either well controled (through...

This paper presents a study of the economic organization of systems of financial cooperatives (FC). The first part presents a theoretical framework rooted in principles of transaction cost economics (TCE) that seeks to explain empirical regularities observable in systems of FC worldwide. The...