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This paper investigates whether local cooperative banks played a role in mitigating income inequality within Italian municipalities following the main crises that marked the European landscape from 2008 to 2015, namely the financial and sovereign-debt crises. Our empirical findings indicate that, despite the overall rise in income inequality during the post-crisis periods, municipalities hosting at least one cooperative bank branch experienced a comparatively smaller increase. This mitigating effect on income inequality is not observed in the case of non-cooperative banks. Furthermore, the size of the cooperative banking sector emerged as a significant factor in shaping income distribution: municipalities characterized by larger amounts of cooperative banks loans and deposits displayed lower levels of income inequality. The distributional impact of cooperative banks following the two crises was particularly …