A Failed Institutional Transplant
Raiffeisen′s Credit Cooperatives in Ireland, 1894-1914
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8118399 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Timothy W Guinnane (0000-0002-3716-0011, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1994 |
| Volume | 31 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 38-61 |
| Publication date | 1994-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Explorations in Economic History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0014-4983 • E-ISSN: 1090-2457 |
| Publisher | Elsevier BV (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1006/exeh.1994.1002 |
| OpenAlex | W2063008051 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 46 |
Horace Plunkett′s Irish cooperative association introduced credit cooperatives into Ireland in 1894. The Irish cooperatives were modeled on the very successful Raiffeisen credit cooperatives of rural Germany. Credit cooperatives were never successful in Ireland, in contrast to other branches of Irish cooperation. Irish bankers argued that credit cooperatives failed simply because there was no need for such an institution. Several observers, including parliamentary bodies, came to the opposite conclusion: credit was expensive for smallholders, and credit cooperatives were a potential solution to the problem. This essay argues that several features of the Irish economic and social environment undermined the cooperative′s operation. The Irish credit cooperatives never attracted as members the more prosperous locals who provided crucial monitoring and expertise in Germany. The Irish cooperative movement was also never able to develop the strong central auditing federations that supervised and certified German cooperatives. Finally, rural Irish people seemed reluctant to force their neighbors to repay loans or face adverse consequences, which undermined the monitoring and enforcement advantages that cooperatives potentially have over commercial banks. This episode illustrates both the importance of timing in institutional development and the difficulty of transplanting institutions from one social and economic context to another
Audit · Business · Context (archaeology · Economic growth · Economics · Enforcement · Face (sociological concept · Institution · Irish · Political science · Sociology · Irish and British Studies · Accounting · Law
Community Banking Institutions
The fundamental problem of exchange
The Microfinance Promise
Microcredit Under the Microscope
Balancing efficiency and equity. Consumer cooperatives in Barcelona (Spain), 1898–1936
Cooperatives as Information Machines
Trust
Historical Diversity in Credit Intermediation
Domestic Responses to Capital Market Internationalization Under the Gold Standard, 1870–1914
Church‐based Credit Cooperatives in Germany
How Should Rural Financial Cooperatives Be Best Organized? Evidence From Ethiopia
Théoriser le crédit de face-à-face
Les institutions financières comme organisations
El microcrédito antes de las cooperativas
Reframing the “Irish Question”
The Most Supportive Environment in the World”? Tracing the Development of an Institutional ‘Ecosystem’ for Social Enterprise
Why Did Most Cooperatives Fail? Spanish Agricultural Cooperation in the Early Twentieth Century
Identity and the Evolution of Institutions
Microcredit
Collective agricultural production
Capitalists and co-operators
Frontiers of Development Economics
Optimal collective contract without peer information or peer monitoring
The economics of lending with joint liability
Group lending, local information and peer selection
Group insurance and lending with endogenous social collateral
A Tale of “Benevolent” Governments
Could Southern Italians Cooperate? Banche Popolari in the Mezzogiorno
Working-Class Household Consumption Smoothing in Interwar Britain
A model co-operative country’
Universal Banking in Pre-World War I Germany
Microcredit in Prefamine Ireland
Do Institutional Transplants Succeed? Regulating Raiffeisen Cooperatives in South India, 1930–1960
Cooperative credit in colonial Bengal
Civilising rural Ireland
The Power of Geographical Imaginaries in the European International Order
The Rise and Fall of State Banking in OECD Countries
Generic Authority Structures and the Emergence of Credit Unions
Law and Peace
Nonmarket Institutions for Credit and Risk Sharing in Low-Income Countries
When Order Affects Performance
Incentives, technology and the shift to year-round dairying in late nineteenth-century Denmark1
Raiffeisenism abroad
Historical Knowledge and Quantitative Analysis
Economic Interests and the Origins of Electoral Systems
Learning from Failures in Microfinance
| Unique citing works | 46 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,48 |
| Citation span | 1995 - 2025 (31) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 46 |