Demografía de las cooperativas en tiempos de crisis

The main goal of this paper is to study how the crisis of 2008 affected the business demography of cooperatives and to compare their situation with that of the years prior to and after the crisis. To this end, the crisis period is delimited, and the pre-crisis and a post-crisis periods are established by defining the turning points in the cyclical fluctuations of the GDP by means of the deviation cycle. This methodology allows us to define these periods: 2000-2007 pre-crisis, 2008-2013 crisis and 2013-2016 post-crisis. The analysis by class of cooperatives indicates that those that represent a greater volume, i.e. the associated work cooperatives, are those that decreased more in number and in employment. The purpose of these cooperatives, which is tied more to productive activities and to the market, made them especially vulnerable. In conclusion, the number of cooperatives and of their employment are evidence that the crisis triggered a change in their relation to the business cycle.