Impact of Cooperatives on Economic Growth and Employment in Italy

The concepts of economic growth and employment evidently have a deep-rooted history in the economics literature. Especially with the effect of the intellectual revolution and enlightenment that took place in parallel with the Industrial Revolution, the developments in science have also found reflection in the field of economy. The modern cooperative movement, which advocates a participatory and democratic management structure, has spread to Europe and to the world starting from England depending on the pace of industrialization. Today, cooperatives operating in developed countries have an important role in supporting economic growth and employment in their economies. In line with the sustainable development goals, it is observed that the importance attributed to cooperatives has increased throughout Europe, especially in the European Union countries. Accordingly, in this study, the effect of cooperatives on economic growth and employment in Italy, which has a long history of cooperative movement, is analyzed econometrically with the models created using the data from Italian National Institute of Statistics regarding Italy’s 21 Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics-2 regions for the period of 2011-2022. According to the findings from the econometric analysis, it is seen that the employment created by the cooperatives has positive and statistically significant effects on economic growth and employment.