Agricultural credit markets are dominated by two institutional retail lender groups, the cooperative Farm Credit System (FCS) and commercial banks. Together these two lender groups supply 70 percent of the farm sector’s total credit needs. This analysis uses USDA’s 2001 and 2002 Agricultural...

The 1998 Survey of Small Business Finances provides robust information on the financing of small businesses including an overview of their firm’s organization, financial characteristics, and credit use. Information from the survey is used in this study to compare the financial characteristics...