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The literature recognizes that credit cooperatives are the “appropriate technology” for relatively backward economies, but should fade away or disappear altogether as economic development proceeds. However, surprisingly, they are among the fastest growing groups of financial institutions in some advanced economies. Though the credit cooperatives in Portugal and Spain present relatively small market shares, they perform a very important role in the rural economy. Over the last decades, the Iberian credit cooperatives have adopted a process of economic and financial restructuring, through an intensive wave of mergers and the creation of banking networks: Caja Rural Group, in Spain, and Crédito Agrícola Group, in Portugal. Despite that common path, the Iberian reality is still very different. In this paper we describe the historical roots of Portuguese and Spanish cooperative credit, focusing our analysis on the governance structure, especially on the issues arising from the strict application of traditional cooperative rules.

**: Over the last decade, increasing financial problems in the Portuguese Agricultural Credit Cooperatives (ACCs), mainly difficulty in gathering equity, have forced them to pursue an intensive merger activity. This paper describes the economic reasons that have led the ACCs to merge, and analyses the ex post merger impact on their economic performance. The results show that: (a) incorporating ACCs are larger, more profitable and hold a better credit management; (b) incorporated ACCs are smaller, face difficulties in reaching a minimum efficient scale and have weaker credit management as well as leverage problems; and (c) merged ACCs have a heavy administrative cost structure and also face profitability problems. Regarding the mergers’ ex post impact on the ACCs performance, we find no positive influence on cost reduction, credit management and solvency ratio.

In this paper we study the structure-performance relationship in the Portuguese banking industry during the nineties. The hypothesis of pure collusion, efficient structure, modified efficient structure and hybrid collusion/efficiency are tested using a direct measure of efficiency. Our results endorse the hybrid collusion/efficiency hypothesis in the first half of the nineties. However, after 1994 results lend some support to the modified efficient structure hypothesis. Competition at the local level remains important throughout the decade, suggesting that banks in less competitive local markets exert some level of market power and exhibit superior performances. Financial support from JNICT – Junta Nacional de Investigação Científica e Tecnológica (grant PCSH/ECO/938/95) is acknowledged. info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

La globalizacion esta poniendo en cuestion la esencia de la gobernanza cooperativa y su estructura societaria, sobre todo en los paises del Sur de Europa, como Portugal, donde muchos productores estan organizados en cooperativas agricolas tradicionales y de estilo mediterraneo. Este trabajo analiza los efectos de las variables de gobierno y control relacionados con el tamano sobre dos indicadores de comportamiento alternativos: los ingresos transferidos a los miembros/socios y la estructura del capital. Los resultados sugieren que estas cooperativas atraviesan dificultades para mantenerse sostenibles en un mercado de vino global y mas competitivo si siguen, en esencia, una politica de maximo retorno al socio, reduciendo su capacidad para de mejorar la estructura de su deuda y capacidad para financiar inversiones mas rentables, aunque con mayor riesgo, a largo plazo.

The objective of this paper is to analyse the impact of education on personal earnings during the reform of state-owned enterprises, comparing 1995 with 1998 in Hunan, China, using the Mincerian earnings equation method. The results show that the rates of return to education increased, indicating that human capital has been better rewarded as the reforms of the Chinese economic structure have progressed. Moreover, the findings show that primary education receives the highest returns, followed by tertiary education. Middle school education obtains the lowest rewards, reflecting the effects of the reform of state-owned enterprises on middle school graduates on whom the unemployment impact of this change has been the greatest.

In this paper we aim at studying efficiency, productivity and technological change in Portuguese banking during 1990–95, using information on the vast majority of banks operating in Portugal during that period. We use a translog variable cost function and a stochastic frontier model to estimate inefficiency and technological change. Our results suggest that the increased competition that Portuguese banks witnessed over the last few years did not lead to a better overall performance from the standpoint of costs: on the one hand, the annual efficiency average did not clearly increase over time; on the other hand, many more banks are now less efficient (in relative terms) than they were in the early 1990s. They also suggest that there is not a clear relationship between size and cost efficiency. Efficiency and scale economies also seem not to be related with size: some of the less efficient institutions (net assets below 50 million contos) are the ones facing global, although small, economies of scale and th...

This paper will evaluate productivity change in Portuguese banking using the Malmquist productivity index. The results show that between 1990 and 1997, banks in Portugal witnessed increased productivity and strong technological progress. Both small and large banks experienced higher productivity and technological change scores, while mid-sized institutions are putting more effort into catching-up policies. Rural banks have experienced strong productivity growth and are catching up with the best practices but lower levels of technological change. Urban banks show higher productivity growth and technological change levels. Government-owned banks have experienced lower levels of productivity change. Finally, the asset per employee ratio shows a positive correlation with the productivity scores, suggesting that this simple index is a good proxy for productivity.

Since the discovery of the so-called ‘French paradox’ by Renaud & de Lorgeril, M. (1992), a diet of high fat and cholesterol intake along with red wine that does not negatively impact health, such as cardiovascular risks, medical surveys found more positive relations of wine and health and more biochemical substances with positive effects on human health (Anekonda 2016 ; Golderg . The positive effects include blood pressure, cholesterol levels, blood lipids, diabetes, obesity regulation, prevention of atherosclerosis, cardiovascular disease, anti-inflammatory and antitumor effects. In addition to the positive impact on physical health, evidence exist on positive impacts of phenolic compounds (stilbenes, especially resveratrol) on mental health regarding protecting neuronal cells from damage, preventing the development of neurodegenerative diseases, treating depression, improving cognitive function, and increasing memory (Ares et al., 2015 ; Diener et al., 1999 ; Guilemin et al., 2016). The positive psychological responses of humans caused by moderate wine consumption respond to a positive sense psychological well-being, fewer or no symptoms of depression, and a higher level of positive affects and lower negative affects. During the scientific project “Vinum Sanum” several research questions were set and hypothesis upon whom surveys were conducted. The surveys included questions about human behaviour towards wine, medical aspects of wine consumption, comparison of consumers and non-consumers perceptions about health attributes of wine. The study was carried out in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki developed by the World Medical Association and was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Clinical Hospital Center Rijeka (Croatia).The purpose of the study presented in this article was to show how wine consumers perceive wine and how it affects their psychological state. The main objective of this survey was to provide evidence about moderate wine consumption of Malvazija istarska on human health, the possible positive effects of wine consumption on psychological well-being and to detect positive perceptions towards wine. The objective was achieved by testing participants during a period of six weeks of moderate wine consumption of autochthonous Croatian grapevine variety Malvazija istarska (Vitis vinifera L.) produced in Istria county. The data were collected from wine consumers at two time points (in June and July 2019) before and after wine consumption with a self-completed questionnaire that was administered by trained researchers. Two questionnaires were used, one to measure the psychological response of the influence of moderate wine consumption and one to measure the perception of wine and its health attributes. Variables were measured with the Likert scale (1-5 for wine attributes and 1-10 for psychological affects). For data processing descriptive analysis (M, SD), and factor analysis were used. Results indicate the awareness of positive health aspects of wine consumption, connected to the positive effects of wine on cardiovascular health (namely, heart, blood vessels health and levels of blood cholesterol). Wine was perceived as a natural and healthy beverage, in a positive sense with its relaxation, hedonistic effects and quality attributes (ageing/vintage, terroir, micro region/vineyards). The psychological affects/subjective well-being included negative stress affects (being nervous, anxious and under pressure) that were explained by everyday pressures of work and family obligations. The construct of negative affects was separate from the positive affects expressed with feelings of happiness, emotional stability and positive general well-being feelings. The obtained results about positive effects of moderate wine consumption may be useful for other researchers in medical branches who question if moderate wine consumption has positive of negative effects on human health, and may serve in current discussions at the World Health Organization on wine and health.

Wine cooperatives, and agricultural cooperatives in general, have long been negatively judged by consumers, practitioners and researchers (Elster, 1989). Multiple drawbacks of the cooperative models have been investigated, such as agent and incentive problems (Hakelius and Hansson, 2016, Valette et al., 2018), limited ability to scale up (Tortia et al., 2013), slow adaptation to changes in market conditions (Nilsson, 1997). In addition to these structural issues, the assumption of lower quality, reflected by lower price point, has resulted in the poor reputation of wine cooperatives (Schamel, 2015). Furthermore, Garrido (2022) affirms that the low-quality standards conventionally associated to wine cooperatives are a direct consequence of their inability to avoid opportunistic behaviors of their members. Nevertheless, cooperatives still exist, and a growing number of scholars has been highlighting strengths and advantages of this organizational model (Fahlbeck, 2007; Figueredo and Franco, 2018; Valentinov, 2007). In spite of the positive reinterpretation of the cooperative model by scholars, there is no clear consensus over consumers’ judgement of wine cooperatives and their products, and the literature on this topic is fairly limited. On the one hand, some studies confirm that negative prejudice towards wine cooperatives still exists, in particular among European consumers (Pennerstorfer and Weiss, 2012; Sáenz-Navajas et al., 2013). Wine cooperatives are recurringly cited as unable to pursue branding and differentiation strategies (Bonroy et al., 2019; Grashuis, 2018) and catch-up consumers’ growing demand for high quality and variety (Carbone, 2021): this may explain why a non negligeable share of consumers negatively judge the cooperative wine label for all the price segments (Rebelo et al., 2019). On the other hand, some scholars point out a trend reversal. European consumers are apparently shifting towards more positive opinions on cooperatives and the wines they produce, as confirmed by quantitative studies performed in Germany (Dreyer, 2019) and Italy (Schamel, 2014). Furthermore, according to recent literature, the adoption of optimal communication and branding strategies is beneficial for the image of wine cooperatives (Bernal-Jurado et al., 2021; Di Vita et al., 2019; Raza and Thomas, 2018). To the best of our knowledge, while the literature provides multiple examples of Choice Experiments (CE) to study preferences for various attributes and quality clues of wine, only one study has used this methodology to investigate interest in wine from cooperatives among French consumers (Sáenz-Navajas et al., 2013). To fulfill this gap and better understand the opinion on wine cooperatives among Europeans, we developed a CE and used a multi-country longitudinal design to analyze consumers’ preferences for wine labels and specific quality clues. A Computer Assisted Web Interviewing (CAWI) survey and the CE were forwarded to a non-probability sample of 3600 wine consumers in Italy, Germany, France, Spain, Slovenia and the UK, stratified by age, gender and geographical origin. As highlighted by our results, while negative prejudice towards wine cooperatives and their products still persists, more and more consumers embrace the idea that cooperatives might compete not only on price but also on quality. In this sense, communication based on adequate use of labelling and adoption of quality certifications might strengthen the image of wine cooperatives which focus on quality. As wine consumers evolve and become more demanding on intrinsic quality as well as the wine and the winemakers’ identity, history and connection with the territory, cooperatives could further stress their uniqueness: their wines are not only the result of the interaction between man and nature, but also the best expression of a whole local community, embedded and rooted in its territory.

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