DO CREDIT UNIONS CONTRIBUTE TO FINANCIAL INCLUSION AND LOCAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT? EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FROM POLAND
DO CREDIT UNIONS CONTRIBUTE TO FINANCIAL INCLUSION AND LOCAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT? EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FROM POLAND

Summary/Abstract: Financial inclusion is currently on the politicalagenda of many governments and internationalinstitutions as an unavoidable objective of territorialcohesion and economic development programs. It is alsocentral to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).For their part, the role of credit unions as agents of localeconomic development and their commitment to theprovision of financial services in regions subject tounfavorable demographic and economic stress has beenverified by various studies. However, this article examinesthe contribution of credit unions to the processes offinancial inclusion and economic development in Polandunder a regional analysis approach. For this purpose,spatial analysis method is applied to a sample of 3,556credit union bank branches representative of all Polishvoivodeships to determine the distribution of thesebranches. Then, a model based on the research of DiPietro (2016) and Coccorese and Shaffer (2018) isestimated to assess the impact of credit unions on theendogenous economic development of the territory. Theobtained results suggest that credit unions have asignificant influence on the local economic developmentof Polish voivodeships and contribute to the financialinclusion in these regions.

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