Cooperative banks are a driving force for socially committed business at a local level accounting for around one fifth of the European Union (EU) bank deposits and loans. Despite their importance, little is known about the relationship between bank stability and competition for these small...

Cooperative banks are small and their survival is not guaranteed by the "Too Big To Fail" policy so that their default can be concrete in time of crises. We analyze the contribution of efficiency to cooperative bank probability of default. We estimate several measures of bank efficiency...