TARP beneficiaries and their lending patterns during the financial crisis

This paper provides a systematic analysis of the lending performance of U.S. commercial banks and savings institutions that received financial support through the Capital Purchase Program (CPP) established in October 2008. The authors combine U.S. Treasury data on recipients of the CPP with quarterly financial data for the entire population of depository institutions to reconstruct aggregate lending and gross credit flows (expansion and contraction). CPP institutions experienced a less severe lending contraction than non-CPP institutions for all types of loans and bank asset levels. The authors find no evidence of unusual reallocation of lending across depository institutions.