A large body of literature has shown that small firms experience difficulties in accessing the credit market due to informational asymmetries. Banks can overcome these asymmetries through relationship lending, or at least mitigate their effects by asking for collateral. Small firms, especially...

A substantial literature has investigated the role of relationship lending in shielding borrowers from idiosyncratic shocks. Much less is known about how lending relationships and bank-specific characteristics affect the functioning of the credit market in an economy-wide crisis, when banks may...

We propose a new, data-based test for the presence of biased financial advice when households choose between fixed and adjustable rate mortgages. If households are wary, the relative cost of the two types should be a sufficient statistic for a household contract choice: the attributes of the...

We study how relationship lending and transaction lending vary over the business cycle. We develop a model in which relationship banks gather information on their borrowers, which allows them to provide loans for profitable firms during a crisis. Due to the services they provide, operating costs...

We build a model of the mortgage market where banks attain their optimal mortgage portfolio by setting rates and "steering" customers. "Sophisticated" households know which mortgage type is best for them, while "naïve" ones are susceptible to steering by their banks. Using data on the universe...

A large body of literature has shown that small firms experience difficulties in accessing the credit market due to informational asymmetries. Banks can overcome these asymmetries through relationship lending, or at least mitigate their effects by asking for collateral. Small firms, especially...