The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) aimed to quickly deliver hundreds of billions of dollars of loans to small businesses, with the loans administered via private banks. In this paper, we use firm-level data to document the demand and supply of PPP funds. Using an instrumental variables...

Federal place-based policy could improve efficiency if it targets areas with large amenity or agglomeration externalities. We begin by showing that positive shocks to federal spending in a county and their associated economic stimulus substantially decrease crime, an important amenity. We then...