CONCORRENZA E OPERATIVITÀ DEL SISTEMA DI CREDITO COOPERATIVO NELLA PROVINCIA DI TRENTO

[Autom. eng. transl.] The study analyzes the evolution of the cooperative credit system in the province of Trento over the past decade, focusing in particular on the conditions of competition, both between cooperative credit banks and other types of banks, and within the same cooperative credit system. Liberalization has profoundly changed the organization of local banking markets, introducing a significant trade-off between the benefits deriving from greater competition, dimensional growth, despecialization and more efficient risk management, and the advantages offered by the cooperative bank model in terms of mutuality and localism. This trade-off was also affected by the Consolidated Banking Act which eliminated the bans on the territorial overlap of several cooperative banks, now observable in many areas of the country. The supervisory authorities (Bank of Italy and the Italian Competition Authority) have repeatedly argued that an important element of the competitive process in banking markets must also be offered by the competitive comparison within the cooperative credit system. From the theoretical point of view, however, the concern that the territorial overlap between cooperative banks may have negative implications on the operation of the mechanisms typical of the cooperative credit system is not groundless. These mechanisms, in order to avoid the financial exclusion of smaller borrowers, rely on the existence of long-term relationships, as a condition for peer monitoring and the control of moral hazard. In this perspective, the competition between cooperative banks could hinder the mechanisms that operate within the individual cooperative structures, suggesting the territorial uniqueness of the cooperative bank as a necessary condition for an efficient organization of the networks of relations and information dissemination. Taking advantage of the wealth and diversification of the cooperative credit system in the province of Trento, the research confirmed the importance of the conditions of competition in the territory covered by the BCCs for the purpose of the latter's ability to generate credit for local customers . In the decade 2000-2009, the cooperative credit banks that operate in territorial markets in which, on the one hand, there is interbank competition but, on the other hand, there is no competition between cooperative banks have been characterized - both with respect to the mutual banks that operate in monopoly conditions in its own territory, both with respect to BCCs that operate in competition with other BCCs - from systematically higher values than the ratio between Loans to customers and Direct deposits and