Regulation and the Crisis: The Efficiency of Italian Cooperative Banks

Cristian Barra, Sergio Destefanis and Giuseppe Lubrano Lavadera

CSEF Working Papers from Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy

Abstract: In this paper we analyze the impact of the current financial crisis on the determination of technical efficiency in a sample of Italian small banks, highlighting the interaction of the crisis with different regulatory regimes existing for cooperative banks (CB’s) and other banks. We find that the crisis has a negative impact on efficiency, more so for CB's. This is to be expected, as the CB's principle of external mutuality and their branching regulations are likely to locate them in less performing areas. In accordance with this prior, the differential impact of the crisis attenuates or vanishes when we include in the production set some indicators of local environment (GDP per capita). Correspondingly, we find novel evidence in favour of the “bad luck” hypothesis suggested by Berger and De Young (Journal of Banking and Finance, 1997).

Keywords: Cooperative banks; Technical efficiency; Local shocks; Territorial diversification (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D24 G21 L89 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-07-30
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ban and nep-eff
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published in Finance Research Letters

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sef:csefwp:338

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