Agricultural cooperatives represent a promising way of improving the quality of life of half a billion smallholders, who account for the vast majority of the world's food production. Yet, little is known about the institutional factors that explain the potential benefits of being a member of a cooperative. As neither panel data nor comprehensive surveys are available from a cross-country perspective, our study uses a meta-analytical framework to fill this gap. We build a large database on the effects of cooperatives on their members, which consists of 1370 parameter estimates (i.e., outcomes) from 110 academic studies conducted in 32 countries between 1988 and 2018. The descriptive analysis suggests that agricultural cooperatives generally have a positive impact on the welfare of their members. The main analysis, conducted using a heteroskedastic ordered probit model, shows that a stable legal system, especially in non-democracies, amplifies the positive impact of cooperatives on their members. We also find that cooperatives that are part of a federation have a higher probability of reporting a positive outcome, but only when they operate in democracies, highlighting the risk of political capture in non-democracies.

This paper develops a DSGE model centered on a heterogeneous banking sector in which conventional and cooperative banks coexist, as observed in the euro area. Building on the framework of Gerali et al. (2010), the model incorporates four key features of cooperative banks: (i) a higher loan-to-asset ratio, (ii) specialization in lending to households and SMEs, (iii) greater rigidity in interest rate pass-through, and (iv) a significantly higher profit retention rate. These differences are primarily introduced through differentiated adjustment costs and institutionally grounded differences in profit retention rates, while both types of banks share a common intertemporal profit-maximizing objective.Model simulations show that banking system duality weakens the counter-cyclical effects of monetary policy, although the lower responsiveness of cooperative banks to macroeconomic shocks acts as a stabilizing force. Increased rigidity in interest rate setting emerges as the most significant differentiating mechanism.

This paper analyses the environmental benefits of grassroots cooperation in agriculture. Specifically, it focuses on the French context, which is characterised by a heavy reliance on pesticides and by strong inter-farmer interactions structured within farm machinery sharing cooperatives (CUMAs). We theorise that these social interactions are strategically complementary in the sense that the agroecological practices of farmers involved in the CUMA network, in a given spatial unit, are influenced by the presence and actions of CUMA members in their vicinity. At the extensive margin, increased peer-to-peer interactions, driven by a higher density of CUMA members, foster sociotechnical exchanges conducive to reducing pesticide use. At the intensive margin, if members individually make greater use of their CUMA, they collectively gain access to technologically advanced machinery assets, which leads to a reduction in pesticide use through improvements in technical efficiency. Our econometric analysis, based on a dataset provided by the National Federation of CUMAs covering 5793 individual cooperatives, fully supports the extensive-margin mechanism. The intensive-margin mechanism, however, is only observed for greater use of agroecological equipment by CUMA members, suggesting a rebound effect when it comes to conventional equipment. Overall, these results point to the idea of a ‘hidden agroecological transition.’

Although cooperatives are major actors in the transformation of agricultural systems, very little attention has been paid to the conditions that facilitate or hinder their involvement in the sustainable transition. Drawing on theoretical and empirical approaches, we analyze the effect of social capital on the propensity and proportion of investment in environmental assets in the case of agricultural machinery cooperatives (CUMAs) in France. The number of producers within their CUMA is used as a proxy of the bonding social capital and the CUMA's relationships with external organizations as a proxy of the bridging social capital. Our results show a nonmonotonic relationship between the proxies of social capital and investment in environmental assets by CUMAs. However, the effect differs depending on the subdimension of social capital considered. Interestingly, our results show that the effect of social capital within CUMAs remains even when the cooperatives carry out investment renewals that involve less risk for members.

Cet article s’intéresse aux bénéfices environnementaux des Cuma (coopératives d’utilisation de matériel agricole). Nous conceptualisons les Cuma comme des communs artéfactuels et nous apportons les preuves empiriques de leur comportement agroécologiques. Nous montrons tout d’abord comment le capital social au sein d’une Cuma conditionne son investissement dans des actifs agroécologiques, puis comment la densité et des actions des membres de Cuma réduisent l’utilisation des pesticides au niveau territorial.

Cet article examine la gouvernance du réseau fédératif des coopératives d’utilisation de matériel agricole (Cuma). Notre analyse qualitative montre que ce réseau exemplifie deux propriétés essentielles du polycentrisme : une coordination réalisée sans recours à la hiérarchie et une morphologie s’adaptant aux évolutions de l’environnement institutionnel. En conservant un équilibre complexe entre autonomie et mutualisation, le réseau produit des effets bénéfiques pour les membres des Cuma et réduit les externalités environnementales négatives.

Social banks have emerged as a new group of banks that call themselves as "alternative", "ethical", "sustainable", and "value-based". Their small market share increases at a rapid pace and is still expected to grow in the future. Social banks are institutions with both (at least some) activities of financial intermediation and one or several non-financial missions, typically based on environmental and social values. By unpacking the observable, real-life differences between social banks and conventional banks, this chapter paves the way to theorizing the multidimensional characteristics of social banks within the global banking industry. Business models, governance issues, lending technologies, and social outcomes appear to be key aspects to understand how innovative, value-based, social banks work and how they might one day substantively affect mainstream banking business.

Microfinance is generally associated with high repayment rates. However, it is not clear whether the success of microfinance results only from the use of group lending or is also due to other mechanisms such as peer sanctioning or dynamic incentives induced by long-term relationships that are typically included in microfinance contracts. In this paper, we contribute to the existing literature by investigating the respective effects of each of these components of microfinance. This is done by running a laboratory experiment that allows us to isolate long-term relationships from the two other components (i.e. group lending and peer monitoring). Our experiment indicates that peer-lending dimension of microcredit in absence of peer-sanctioning mechanism is not sufficient to mitigate ex ante and ex post moral hazards. In sharp contrast, we find that individualized long-term credit relationships perform significantly better than group-lending mechanisms with or without peer sanctioning.

This paper unpacks the continuum of social finance institutions (SFIs), ranging from foundations offering pure grants to social banks supplying soft loans. The in-between category includes quasi-foundations granting loans requiring partial repayment. In our model, SFIs maximize their social contribution arising from financing successful social projects, under a budget constraint dictated by their funders. We determine the feasibility of each SFI category. Quasi-foundations appear to be efficient and adapted to low market rates. However, reciprocity from SFI borrowers can elicit a so-called hold-up effect, whereby the SFI charges a high interest rate to its loyal clients.

This paper introduces a refined approach to conceptualising the commons in order to shed new light on cooperative practices. Specifically, it proposes the novel concept of Common-Property Assets (CPAs). CPAs are exclusively human-made resources owned under common-property ownership regimes. Our CPA model combines quantity (the flow of resource units available to members) and quality (the impact produced on the community by the members' appropriation of the resource flow). While these two dimensions are largely pre-existing in the conventional case of natural common-pool resources, they directly depend on members' collective action in CPAs. We apply this theoretical framework to farm machinery sharing agreements-a widespread grassroots cooperative phenomenon in agriculture-using a systematic literature review to generalise the findings from a sample of 54 studies published from 1950 to 2018. Our findings show that in successful CPAs, members endorse and do not deviate from a quantity-quality equilibrium that is collectively agreed upon. Despite the existence of thresholds for both quantity and quality due to (axiological) membership heterogeneity, qualitative changes in respect of the common good are possible in CPAs that promote democratic practices. Our study has potentially strong implications for developing ethics in cooperatives and the sustainable development of communities worldwide.

Based on an extensive literature review, this paper proposes to define social banks (SBs) as social enterprises that run banking activities with the social mission of supplying credit to other social enterprises, which are typically less profitable than for-profit businesses. This definition marks our starting point for developing a theoretical framework to explain how SBs survive without subsidies in the banking market. We build on a two-pillar business model of value-based financial intermediation, which comprises an ownership structure that limits residual ownership claims and preferential credit conditions associated with financial sacrifices from motivated depositors. We also clarify the link between SBs and stakeholder banks and weigh up the importance of market interest rates for facilitating the business of SBs. An empirical analysis based on panel regressions on 5,400 European banks over the 1998-2013 period attests to the relevance of our theoretical framework. It also confirms that a low interest rate environment raises concerns about the sustainability of the SB business model.

Using a unique, hand-collected database of 389 small loans granted by a French social bank dealing with genuinely small, informationally opaque businesses (mainly social enterprises), our study highlights the relevance of including soft information (especially on management quality) to improve credit default prediction. Comparing our findings with those of previous studies also reveals that the more opaque the borrower, the higher the predictive value of soft information in comparison with hard. Finally, a cost-benefit analysis shows that including soft information is economically valuable once collection costs have been accounted for, albeit to a moderate extent.

Myriad different types of institutions are involved in social finance. This paper attempts to make sense of the diverse ways of operationalizing the delivery of funds by social financial institutions (SFIs). It explores the continuum of feasible SFIs, which range from foundations offering pure grants to social banks supplying soft loans. The in-between category includes “quasi-foundations” granting loans that require partial repayment only. In our model, the SFIs face information asymmetries and trade off costly social screening against social contributions, under the budget constraint that depends on the generosity of their funders. We characterize the SFIs’ optimal strategy and suggest that quasi-foundations can be efficient vehicles for social finance, especially when social screening costs are relatively low.

This article resorts to Boltanski and Thevenot's Economies of Worth model (1987, 1991) to examine from a theoretical stance the various institutional logics competing in social and solidarity-based economy organizations (SSEOs). The originality of our approach does not lie so much in the identification of the main conventions shaping the governance of SSEOs, but rather in the analysis of the conflicts and achievable compromises among each of these polities. Our contribution is threefold. We first show that the competition among several conventions generates organizational conflicts that are difficult to solve. We then reveal that achieving an (ephemeral) compromise entails a risk of excluding a 'polity', which may in turn weaken the governance of SSEOs. We finally sketch out some perspectives allowing to mitigate this risk. In particular, we outline organizational strategies likely to frame the governance of SSEOs without impairing their identities and plural forms of 'worth'.

Social banks screen loan applicants by using both social and financial criteria, and social screening implies an extra workload. To check the costs involved in this type of screening we use balance-sheet information on European banks, and compare the operating costs of social banks with those of other banks. Surprisingly, our first results suggest that social banks’ costs are not significantly higher than those of their mainstream counterparts. Next, we uncover that the extra costs of social screening are offset by a cheaper workforce. Despite their need for specific screening, social banks are financially sustainable in a market dominated by for-profit institutions.

RÉSUMÉCet article propose d’étudier, au plan théorique, les différentes logiques institutionnelles en concurrence dans les organisations de l’économie sociale et solidaire (OESS). Nous mobilisons dans cette perspective le modèle des Economies de la Grandeur de Boltanski et Thévenot (1987, 1991). Le caractère novateur de notre recherche réside moins dans l'identification des principales conventions qui modèlent la gouvernance des OESS que dans l'examen des conflits et des compromis possibles entre chacune de ces « cités ». Notre analyse souligne tout d'abord que la « compétition » de plusieurs conventions au sein des OESS génère des tensions organisationnelles difficiles à résoudre. Nous montrons ensuite que l'atteinte d'un compromis, en plus d’être éphémère, comporte un risque d'exclusion d'une « cité » qui peut conduire à une fragilisation de la gouvernance des OESS. Au final, nous traçons des perspectives de dépassement de ce risque en exposant différentes stratégies organisationnelles susceptibles de cadrer la gouvernance des OESS sans en altérer leurs identités, ni leurs « grandeurs » multiples.Mots clés: Economie sociale et solidaire, gouvernance, Economies de la Grandeur, logiques institutionnelles, cités

Idiosyncratic knowledge, defined as the internal knowledge produced by a bank on each of its borrowers, is at the heart of the financial intermediation process. Nonetheless, the way bank managers use information in the credit-granting process remains a black box in the existing econometric studies. On the basis of a statistical textual analysis conducted on prior-to-creditcommittee notices of 52 credit files stemming from a social bank, our paper offers three main contributions. First, we show that the social bank under scrutiny produces a rich idiosyncratic knowledge mainly composed of soft information. Second, we reveal how the qualitative and the quantitative dimensions of the idiosyncratic knowledge are used when credit conditions are determined; hierarchy playing a key role in this process of interpretation. Third, our results indicate that the bank relies on an information system as well as on its agents’ cognitive abilities to memorise the idiosyncratic knowledge it produces. In this respect, our research points out deficiencies in the bank’s organisational memory and suggests some directions to remedy them.

How do social banks signal their social commitment to motivated funders? We hypothesize that two main channels are used: selectivity and transparency. We test these predictions using a rich dataset comprising balance-sheet information on 5,000 European banks over the period from 1998 to 2013. The results suggest that social screening leads social banks to higher project selectivity compared to mainstream banks. Social banks also tend to be more transparent than other banks. However, combining selectivity and transparency can result in excess liquidity. Overall, the empirical findings not only confirm our theoretical hypotheses, but also raise challenging issues regarding the management of social banks.

Le savoir idiosyncrasique, defini comme la connaissance interne que la banque produit specifiquement sur chacun de ses emprunteurs, est au cœur du processus d’intermediation financiere. Pourtant, la maniere dont les decisionnaires de la banque utilisent et interpretent cette connaissance dans le processus d’octroi de credit demeure une boite noire dans les etudes econometriques actuelles. A partir d’une analyse statistique textuelle conduite sur 52 avis prealables au comite des engagements d’une banque solidaire francaise, notre recherche fournit trois principales contributions. Tout d’abord, nous montrons que la banque solidaire etudiee produit un savoir idiosyncrasique largement compose d’informations qualitatives. Ensuite, nous revelons comment les dimensions qualitative et quantitative du savoir idiosyncrasique sont interpretees par les intermediaires financiers pour proceder a des offres contractuelles de pret. Cette interpretation est intimement liee a l’architecture organisationnelle de la banque. Enfin, nous nous interrogeons sur la maniere dont la banque memorise la connaissance specifique qu’elle produit sur les emprunteurs. Notre analyse revele que la banque conserve le savoir idiosyncrasique, en articulant un systeme d’information et les capacites cognitives des agents. A cet egard, notre recherche met en lumiere des lacunes dans la memoire organisationnelle de cette banque et des pistes pour y remedier.