This Letter summarizes a recent study on Spanish corporate borrowing, providing general insights into how firms and their lenders respond to economic fluctuations.

In a 2004 study, Harvey, Lin and Roper argue that debt makers with a commitment to monitoring can create value for outside shareholders whenever information asymmetry and agency costs are pronounced. I investigate Harvey, Lin and Roper's claim for bank loans by empirically testing the effect 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 develops a model of the credit market where the equilibrium lending mechanism, as well as the economy's aggregate investment and output, are endogenously determined. It focuses on two crucial elements. One is the micro theory of optimal lending mechanism. Instead of imposing a...

Commercial banks’ lending and deposit-taking business has declined in recent years. Deregulation and new technology have eroded banks’ comparative advantages and made it easier for nonbank competitors to enter these markets. In response, banks have shifted their sales mix toward noninterest...

This paper characterizes the labor supply and borrowing of a household facing collateral requirements that limit its debt and compel it to accumulate equity in its durable goods stock. The household's discount rate exceeds the market rate of interest, so it would otherwise finance increased...

The credit channel of monetary policy transmission operates through changes in lending. To examine this channel, we explore how movements in the real federal funds rate affect bank lending. Using data on individual loans from the Survey of Terms of Bank Lending, we are able to differentiate two...

Anecdotal evidence that the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) influences the lending behavior of financial institutions has not been uniformly supported by empirical research. We revisit this issue by evaluating changes in low-income mortgage lending at commercial banks over the 1992-96 period....

Analyzes the 2006 data collected under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA). The review focuses primarily on the pricing information in the data. Includes an assessment of factors that account for the variation in rates of serious delinquency on mortgage loans across U.S. metropolitan area...

As long as the strength of the recovery remains uncertain, there are few other investment opportunities, after adjusting for risk and taxes, with anticipated returns greater than the near-zero interest the Federal Reserve pays on deposits.