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Abstract
In rural areas, many municipalities still do not have bank branches and credit cooperatives emerge as
alternative institutions in providing credit, with distinct characteristics of banks, given their importance for local
development. This study seeks to measure the impact of the implementation of supportive rural credit cooperatives
in Brazilian municipalities on per capita GDP of agriculture (value added) using two quasi-experimental methods
to provide robustness to the findings on the impact. It was verified a positive causal relationship, using differencesin-
differences with matching by propensity score, indicating an average impact of the presence of supportive rural
credit cooperatives on per capita agricultural GDP in 2010 of R$ 987,66, significant at 5%. Positive coefficients
for the treatment variable were also observed in OLS regressions weighted by propensity scores, with the per capita
GDP of agriculture roughly 20% higher for municipalities that created supportive rural credit cooperatives between
2008 and 2009. These results show the importance of creating supportive rural credit cooperatives in rural areas of
Brazilian municipalities, especially in those that do not have them yet, since the role of these cooperatives is being
played in order to contribute to the local growth.