Cooperatives and Crisis: Financial Dynamics on the Italian Primary Sector Cooperatives

This paper aims to analyse the financial structure of Italian cooperatives, with a focus on primary sector, before and during the crisis. The decade considered has been 2004-2013 and the financial dynamics have been assessed using two ratios - the Financial Leverage Ratio and Quick Ratio. To answer the research questions, starting from secondary data on AIDA database (at the end 291 cooperatives), first an exploratory study has been carried on through a trend analysis, then the analysis of variance (ANOVA) has been used to verify if there are statistically differences between geographic areas. The findings show that the financial structure of cooperatives in the primary sector have not been substantially affected by the crisis. Moreover the chosen discriminating factor produces statistically significant differences in the financial structure of cooperatives.