Financial Intermediation: The Case of German Credit Cooperatives

金融中介对任何经济体的增长都至关重要。如果没有某种机制来匹配储蓄者和投资者，一个经济体就缺乏将过剩资源引导到生产目的的能力。然而，在历史和现代经济中，信息和其他问题有时限制了金融机构在资本配置中发挥作用的能力。这项研究的目的是分析一种在不适合传统银行方法的环境中极其成功的金融中介；德国农业信贷合作社形成于19世纪。该项目旨在利用历史资料和现代经济理论，理解为什么这些信用合作社能够为那些太穷而无法成为银行理想客户的人提供金融中介服务。这项研究之所以重要，是因为对资本市场制度演变的理解对于理解长期经济增长和发展至关重要。此外，更好地了解农业信贷合作社的效率，可能会对当前有关发展中国家的政策产生有益的影响。

Financial intermediation is crucial to the growth of any economy. Without some mechanism to match savers to investors, an economy lacks the ability to channel surplus resources to productive ends. In historical and modern economies alike, however, information and other problems have sometimes limited the ability of financial institutions to play their role in the allocation of capital. The purpose of this research is to analyze a type of financial intermediary that was extremely successful in an environment inhospitable to the methods of conventional banks; the German agricultural credit cooperatives formed during the nineteenth century. The project is designed to exploit historical sources and draw on modern economic theory to understand why these credit cooperatives were able to perform financial intermediation services for those too poor to be desirable customers for banks. This research is important because the understanding of the evolution of capital market institutions is critical to any understanding of long term economic growth and development. Also, a better understanding of the efficiency of agricultural credit co-ops may have useful implications for current policy regarding developing countries.