Regulation, supervision and deposit insurance for financial cooperatives: an empirical investigation

This paper analyses the impact of different regulation and supervision approaches, as well as deposit insurance schemes, on the development of financial cooperatives in developing countries, using random and fixed effects estimators. Information on laws regulating financial cooperatives, the supervisory approaches adopted, and deposit insurance schemes in sixty-five developing countries were collected-mostly-from original legislations for the period 1995-2014. Key findings suggest that indicators of financial cooperative development are positively correlated with the existence of a specialized regulation; supervision under non-bank financial supervisory authorities; and the presence of deposit insurance schemes, while general cooperative society's regulations and banking regulations are negatively correlated with financial cooperatives' indicators. These results are robust after controlling for economic and institutional factors as well as potential endogeneity bias.