Impact of agricultural development on economic and financial situation of cooperative banks in Poland

The paper examines the impact of development of agricultural sector on performance of the cooperative banks in Poland in years 1997-2004. The levels of the agricultural development and the economic/financial situation of the banks were assessed by using country-level and regional-level aggregate indicators based on the factor analysis. The research results show that the type of region (i.e. voivodeship and macro-region) has a statistically significant impact both on the aggregate indicator of agricultural development and the aggregate indicator of banks’ performance. As for the relationship between the agricultural development level and the economic/financial situation of banks, statistically significant correlations were found only for four out of sixteen voivodeships.