We examine the extent to which financial market development impacts the diffusion of 16 major technologies, looking across 55 countries, from 1870 to 2000. We find that greater depth in financial markets leads to faster technology diffusion for more capital-intensive technologies, but only in...

We examine the effect of US branch banking deregulations on the entry size of new firms using micro-data from the US Census Bureau. We find that the average entry size for startups did not change following the deregulations. However, among firms that survived at least four years, a greater...

We examine entrepreneurship and creative destruction following US banking deregulations using Census Bureau data. US banking reforms brought about exceptional growth in both entrepreneurship and business closures. The vast majority of closures, however, were the new ventures themselves. Although...

We use loan-level data to study how the organizational structure of banks impacts small business lending. We find that decentralized banks ? where branch managers have greater autonomy over lending decisions ? give larger loans to small firms and those with "soft information". However,...

This paper uses a series of experiments with commercial bank loan officers to test the effect of performance incentives on risk-assessment and lending decisions. We first show that, while high-powered incentives lead to greater screening effort and more profitable lending, their power is muted...