 Why Danish Credit Co-operatives were so unimportantTimothy Guinnane and
Ingrid Henriksen
No 97-25, Discussion Papers from University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics Abstract: Denmark's credit cooperatives were introduced relatively late and were never as important to the Danish financial system as credit cooperatives in several similar European countries. This experience stands in contrast to the experience of other cooperative enterprises in Denmark, most notably cooperative creameries. We argue that the Danish experience does not reflect a lack of need for such institutions or an inability to adapt them to Danish conditions. Rather, in the 1860s rural Danish people had succeeded in adapting another form of financial institution, the savings bank, to serve the needs of the small borrowers who elsewhere were the main clientele of the credit cooperative. Thus much of the need for cooperatives had been satisfied by another institution. The Danish experience illustrates both the adaptability of financial institutions and the sensitivity of cooperatives to competition for their niche in the financial system. Keywords: history of credit cooperatives; savings banks (search for similar items in EconPapers) Published in: Scandinavian Economic History Review 46(2) 1998, 32-54 There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it. Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kud:kuiedp:9725 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Discussion Papers from University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics Oester Farimagsgade 5, Building 26, DK-1353 Copenhagen K., Denmark. Contact information at EDIRC. |
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