In 2009 there were over 49,330 credit unions across 98 countries with more than 184 million members and approximately $1,354 billion in assets. There is a great diversity within the credit union movement across these countries. This reflects the various economic, historic and cultural contexts...

This study examines the firm size distribution of US financial institutions. A truncated lognormal distribution describes the size distribution, measured using assets data, of a large population of small, community-based commercial banks. The size distribution of a smaller but increasingly...

This paper uses hazard function estimations together with cross-sectional growth regressions to examine the impact of exit through merger and acquisition (M&A) or failure, and internally-generated growth, on the firm-size distribution of the US credit union industry. Consolidation through M&A...

This study examines the relative performance of Japanese cooperative banks between 1998 and 2009, explicitly modeling non-performing loans as an undesirable output. Three key findings emerge. First, the sector is characterized by increasing returns to scale which supports the ongoing...

We examine the determinants of disappearance through liquidation or acquisition for US credit unions during the period 2001-06. The hazard of disappearance is inversely related to both asset size and profitability, and positively related to liquidity. Growth-constrained credit unions are less...

Credit unions are exempt from paying income taxes, and these tax savings are supposed to subsidize the provision of financial services to credit union members. In this paper, we investigate whether the entire credit union tax subsidy is being passed along to credit union members — in the form...

The government has been actively encouraging the development of credit unions to help the financially excluded. However, rather than stimulating credit union development, government grants can erode the community self-help ethos on which credit unions are founded. Policies should be formulated...

Against the current backdrop of deteriorating economic and financial conditions we consider recent trends and current prospects for credit unions in Great Britain. We note that although credit unions have experienced solid membership and asset growth there are clouds on the horizon. Bad debts...

As member-owned, not-for-profit financial institutions, credit unions are an important instrument of public policy, particularly in pushing forward measures to tackle financial and social exclusion. Historically, the credit union movement in Great Britain has been hampered by a number of...