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 test whether the gains from hiring an outside manager exceed the principal-agent costs of owner-manager separation at 266 small, closely held U.S. commercial banks. Our results suggest that hiring an outside manager can improve a bank's profit efficiency, but that these gains depend on...

This paper sheds some light on the empirical importance of supplier relationships, including ethnic ties, for the use of trade credit by minority-owned small businesses. Results based on the 1993 National Survey of Small Business Finance (NSSBF) indicate that ethnic differences in the use of...

Banking industry consolidation has raised concern about the supply of small business credit since large banks generally invest lower proportions of their assets in small business loans. However, we find that the likelihood that a small business borrows from a bank of a given size is roughly...

This paper investigates the impact of the relationship between a small firm and its lender on the interest rate paid by the firm. I examine detailed data on loans made by small business investment companies (SBICs) to small firms between 1986 and 1991, and my estimates imply that, other things...

Profitability is a central concern when governments provide guarantees to increase the flow of funds to disadvantaged groups. We examine the profitability of small business investment companies (SBICs) that are chartered and regulated by the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) to finance...

Using a unique transactions-level dataset, this paper examines the investment choices of small business investment companies (SBICs), which are private venture capital firms licensed and regulated by the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA). SBICs make debt and equity investments in small...