This paper examines the mechanism through which banking sector distress affects the availability of credit. We use the experience of the United States during the Great Depression, a period of intense bank distress, to conduct our analysis. We utilize previously neglected data from a 1934 survey...

This paper models entry and competition in "high-risk" credit markets. An incumbent lender's advantage over any outside bank derives from its knowledge of (i) the risk profile of its (creditworthy) clients and (ii) uncreditworthy types in the borrower population. Screening is costly and the...

Sims' innovation-accounting techniques are used to investigate the relationship between housing starts and mortgage availability using U.S. monthly data over 1967-1984. First, a four variable vector autoregression is employed to compute impulse response functions. The results suggest that...