Stylized facts suggest that bank lending behavior is highly procyclical. We test a new hypothesis that may help explain why this occurs. The institutional memory hypothesis is driven by deterioration in the ability of loan officers over the bank's lending cycle that results in an easing of...

We address the causes, consequences, and implications of the cross-border consolidation of financial institutions by reviewing several hundred studies, providing comparative international data, and estimating cross-border banking efficiency in France, Germany, Spain, the U.K., and the U.S....

We examine the economics of financing small business in private equity and debt markets. Firms are viewed through a financial growth cycle paradigm in which different capital structures are optimal at different points in the cycle. We show the sources of small business finance, and how capital...

We jointly analyze the static, selection, and dynamic effects of domestic, foreign, and state ownership on bank performance. We argue that it is important to include indicators of all the relevant governance effects in the same model. quot;Nonrobustnessquot; checks (which purposely exclude some...

Large and foreign-owned institutions may have difficulty extending relationship loans to informationally opaque small firms. Bank distress does not appear to affect small business lending, although even small firms may react to bank distress by borrowing from multiple banks.Consolidation of the...

We test hypotheses about the effects of bank size, foreign ownership, and distress on lending to informationally opaque small firms using a rich new data set on Argentinean banks, firms, and loans. We also test hypotheses about borrowing from a single bank versus multiple banks. Our results...

We address the causes, consequences, and implications of the cross-border consolidation of financial institutions by reviewing several hundred studies, providing comparative international data, and estimating cross-border banking efficiency in France, Germany, Spain, the U.K., and the U.S....

This article analyzes the economics of small business finance and the private equity and debt markets in which these businesses raise funds. The framework used is a financial growth cycle paradigm, in which the optimal choice among capital structures differs over the cycle. We also show the...

This paper examines the role of relationship lending in small firm finance. We examine price and nonprice terms of bank lines of credit (L/C) extended to small firms. Our focus on bank L/Cs allows us toe examine a type of loan contract in which the bank-borrower relationship is likely to be an...

Market size structure refers to the distribution of shares of different size classes of local market participants, where the sizes are inclusive of assets both within and outside the local market. We apply this new measure of market structure in two empirical analyses of the U.S. banking...