We show that since 2007, there was a large and persistent shift in the composition of lenders to small firms. Large banks impacted by the real estate prices collapse systematically contracted their credit to all small firms throughout the U.S.. However, healthy banks expanded their operations...

We use an innovative survey tool to collect management practice data from 732 medium sized manufacturing firms in the US, France, Germany and the UK. These measures of managerial practice are strongly associated with firm-level productivity, profitability, Tobin's Q, sales growth and survival...

A surprisingly small number of innovative firms use the patent system. In the UK, the share of firms patenting among those reporting that they have innovated is about 4%. Survey data from the same firms support the idea that they do not consider patents or other forms of registered IP as...

Small and young businesses are essential for job creation, innovation, and economic growth. Even most of the superstar firms start their business life small and then grow over time. Small firms have less internal resources, which makes them more fragile and sensitive to macroeconomic conditions....

The distance between small firms and their lenders in the United States is increasing. Not only are firms choosing more distant lenders, they are also communicating with them in more impersonal ways. After documenting these systematic changes, we demonstrate that they do not stem from small...

Was the $278 billion reboot of the $800 billion Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) in early 2021 disbursed equitably to minority communities? This paper provides the first analysis of how PPP funds were disbursed to minority communities in the third and final round of the program, which was...

Using confidential regulatory firm-bank-loan level data from the U.S., we document four new facts about the credit market. First, private SMEs typically utilize all available bank credit which comprises their entire balance sheet debt, compared to large listed firms who can switch between...

We explore the sources of racial disparities in small business lending by studying the $806 billion Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which was designed to support small business jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic. PPP loans were administered by private lenders but federally guaranteed, largely...

This paper argues that rental market interactions allow small firms to increase their effective scale and mechanize production, even when each individual firm would be too small to invest in expensive machines. We conduct a novel survey of manufacturing firms in Uganda, which uncovers an active...