Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics最新文献

We use a database composed of 2,545 Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) worldwide for the period 2008–18 to explore the effect of a larger share of women's workforce on both staff wages and overall monetary compensation within MFIs. MFIs are different from other industries, as they are traditionally women-centered, i.e. they have a significant share of women employees at every level of the corporate hierarchy and mostly serve women clients. Applying both traditional estimation methodology and techniques aimed at accounting for possible endogeneity among the main variables, we find that a higher proportion of women on staff significantly increases the average expense per worker (which also includes the incentive components of remuneration) while the effects are considerably smoothed (or not significant) on the base salary. This leads us to conclude that, unlike what is seen in other sectors of the economy, MFIs do not pay women less. Yet, significant positive effects of women in the workforce, especially on average overall monetary compensation, suggest that women are likely to exploit their superior skills and/or gender affinity advantages with customers of the same gender to enhance MFIs’ efficiency and profitability, thereby achieving higher incentive compensation, mostly in the form of bonuses and other benefits.

In sub-Saharan Africa, there are growing calls for policy reforms to revive the farmer cooperative movement. However, questions remain over whether farmer participation in agricultural cooperatives brings the desired innovation for markets and commercialization. This study uses a sample of 206 farmers from northern Uganda to examine what drives farmer participation and commercialization among members of groundnut producer cooperatives. Results from a two-stage Heckman regression reveal that cooperative functioning in the form of hiring equipment to farmers, value addition, farmer training, and product quality assessment drives farmer participation in cooperative business. The study also shows that equity strategies, notably through subscription fees and farm-inputs supply negatively impact commercialization among cooperative participant farmers. This study deepens the literature on cooperatives pinpointing the role of cooperative services in farmer participation and how stringent equity strategies reduce farmer commercialization among cooperative participants. We call for policy interventions that prioritize capacity building of producer cooperatives for improved functioning and better provision of services. This approach will enable these cooperatives to be effectively harnessed for market innovation.

Crowdfunding is an innovative means of financing entrepreneurial initiatives. This study explores the effect of signaling on the crowdfunding performance of social economy organizations (SEOs) in South Korea. Analyzing 677 reward-based crowdfunding projects by SEOs, we found that signaling social purpose, economic purpose, and organizational information were likely to be related to performance. In addition, signals reflecting an isomorphism akin to that of SEOs' identity were also positively correlated with crowdfunding performance. These findings contribute to the literature by offering insights about the effect of signals of SEOs on crowdfunding and demonstrating that fundraiser characteristics may influence crowdfunding performance.

A plethora of empirical work has aimed to investigate the determinants of the shadow economy over the last few years. The impacts of government spending on the shadow economy have been explored. However, the effect of a moderating factor that affects this nexus has been largely ignored in the existing literature. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to explore the moderating role of government effectiveness on public spending on the education–shadow economy nexus, in eight Southeast Asian countries from 2001 to 2017. This paper uses the dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS), fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS), and the panel causality approach to analyze the data. Empirical findings from this paper indicate that public spending on education and government effectiveness negatively impacts the size of the shadow economy. Interestingly, government effectiveness serves as a critical catalyst in shaping the effect of government spending on education. We also observed that economic growth and foreign direct investment have significant negative effects, while unemployment and inflation have significant positive effects on the shadow economy. Additionally, the causality results confirmed the presence of bidirectional causality in public spending education, government effectiveness, economic growth, foreign direct investment, and unemployment in the shadow economy. This study recommends that governments and policymakers pursue policies and programs that invest more in education and enhance government effectiveness.

In many countries, farmer cooperatives have been successful at facilitating access to markets in conditions of imperfect competition for a long time. However, modern farmer cooperatives have only been operational in Romania since 2005, and their development is slowed by several internal and external conditions. In the absence of empirical evidence of possible explanations for alleged shortcomings in the growth of farmer cooperatives in Romania, applied research is necessary to inform recommendations for practitioners, policymakers, and other stakeholders. Using financial data from 1,426 farmer cooperatives in Romania for the 2017–21 period, we estimate a double hurdle panel model of the probability and the intensity commercial activity with annual revenue as the variable of interest. All else equal, annual revenue increased in 2020 and 2021 relative to 2017, which to some extent refutes observations of underdevelopment. Although the membership size of farmer cooperatives in Romania is relatively small, its relationship to the probability and the intensity of commercial activity is positive. The relationship of age to the probability and the intensity of commercial activity is ∩-shaped, which may imply a relatively short lifespan for farmer cooperatives in Romania. Possible explanations are member opportunism and double taxation misunderstandings, but further research is necessary to generate more insights.

Effective government rules and regulations, as well as the ability of the regulator to curb corruption and promote voice and accountability, can influence the ability of bank management to allocate resources and ensure high performance. Based on this assumption, we aim to find out whether institutional quality is able to improve bank performance in Italy. To do so, we rely mainly on the diversity of banks, thus capturing the different behaviors of the two main categories, i.e. cooperative and for-profit banks. Using a parametric method, the results show a clear impact of most dimensions of institutional quality on reducing banks’ cost inefficiency. Some robustness checks, especially regarding the role of market structure, confirm our findings.

This paper estimates the impact of participation in governance on member satisfaction with cooperatives using survey data from 960 land cooperative members in the Yangtze River Delta. The instrumental variable approach is used to address potential endogeneity. We find that participation in governance increases member satisfaction with cooperatives by approximately 26.2%. In particular, the impact of participation in governance is much higher for elite members with political connections than for ordinary members. The recognition of member rights and duties increases the likelihood of member participation in governance. To achieve the long-term development of cooperative organizations, policy-makers should encourage cooperative members to actively participate in governance, for example, by increasing cooperative members’ understanding of their rights and responsibilities.

Native Community Development Financial Institutions (Native CDFIs) have become an increasingly important source of credit and financial services in the areas on or near American Indian reservations in the United States. Guided by a conceptual framework developed on the basis of the related finance literature and drawing on loan-level data from eleven Native CDFI loan funds, we offer the first systematic quantitative analysis of lending in the Native CDFI industry. As hypothesized, Native CDFIs on average give out small loans but support borrowers in varied circumstances with diverse loan products. Important predictors of delinquency include both conventional, hard information-based, measures of client risk, and alternative, soft information-based, community-informed and character-based measures. Overall, these findings lend strong support to holistic approaches for assessing client creditworthiness for Native CDFI operations. More generally, our analysis contributes new insights into the operations of an industry that plays an instrumental role in removing barriers to socioeconomic development in Native communities.

Terms of trade remain inherently volatile in the global market, exerting pressure on tax revenue with the resulting change in prices and trade (export or import) volumes. This study investigated the empirical relationship between terms of trade volatility from a regional perspective using a dynamic bias corrected model. A corrected dynamic fixed effect and one-step diff-GMM models are used to estimate the effect of terms of trade volatility using a set of panel data for 41 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries from 1990 to 2022. The findings show that terms of trade changes have a positive effect on tax to GDP ratio and its volatility has indirect negative effects. Informal economic activities tend to deteriorate tax revenue in SSA. Thus, terms of trade volatility depress growth of GDP per capital and tax base in SSA. The findings imply the need for hedging the risks associated with terms of trade volatility, intensifying agriculture production and increasing the speed of formalizing informal sectors in order to reduce associated risks of depressing tax base in SSA.