BELFAST, Ireland – To most credit union personnel, credit unions are places of business. To several university professors, they are a source of scholarly research. A group of scholars has banded together to form the Credit Union Research Forum. The members of the forum include professors from universities in Ireland, England, Wales, Scotland, New Zealand and Australia as well as two economists from the Federal Bank of St. Louis in the United States. The members' backgrounds include specialties in finance, business, accounting, management, rural development, community development, social integration and law. The forum does research in many areas of credit unions and accepts work from both academics and experts in the field. Although they concentrate on Ireland and the United Kingdom, they are also open to credit union contributions from other locations. There is much to study, for each country has its own story to tell. In Ireland, the credit union movement is well established. It is almost impossible to drive through any town without finding at least one credit union. In the United Kingdom, credit unions are beginning to grow as more legislation is giving them increased flexibility. However, in the United Kingdom, credit unions are still seen as an alternative to banks for the poor. One of the main people behind the forum is Donal McKillop, professor of financial services at Queens University in Belfast. He is currently working on a number of research projects including productivity changes in U.S. credit unions. Working with him both in the forum and on the project is Charles Ferguson, a Senior Lecturer in Business Organization at the University of Ulster. He is author of a book entitled The Strategic Development of Credit Unions. Funding for projects comes from a variety of sources including The Royal Irish Academy, The Association of Certified Chartered Accountants (England and Wales), and The Irish Accountancy Educational Trust and the European Commission under the auspices of its programme for Mutual and Co-operative Institutions. Papers produced by the forum are located on their web site www.creditunionresearch.com/ for anyone to use. The topics can be very geographically specific such as An Examination of Borrower-Orientation and Scale Effects in UK Credit Unions or Further Examination of Economies of Scale in Credit Unions: A New Zealand Study. Others are broader such as The Growth of Credit Unions and Credit Co-operatives – Is The Past Still Present? or An Industry Approach to Classifying Credit Union Development. United States interests are represented in papers entitled Wages and Risk Taking in Occupational Credit Unions: Theory and Practice and Credit Unions and the Common Bond from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. -

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