Collateral is a widely used, but not well understood, debt-contracting feature. Two broad strands of theoretical literature explain collateral as arising from the existence of either ex ante private information or ex post incentive problems between borrowers and lenders. However, the extant...

We study the dynamics of market entry following mergers and acquisitions (M&As), and the behavior of recent entrants in supplying output that might be withdrawn by the consolidating firms. The data, drawn from the banking industry, suggest that M&As are associated with subsequent increases in...

We investigate the sources of recent changes in the performance of U.S. banks using concepts and techniques borrowed from the cross-section efficiency literature. Our most striking result is that during 1991-1997, cost productivity worsened while profit productivity improved substantially,...

Over the past several years, substantial research effort has gone into measuring the efficiency of financial institutions. Many studies have found that inefficiencies are quite large, on the order of 20% or more of total banking industry costs and about half of the industry's potential profits....

U.S. commercial banks are increasingly using credit scoring models to underwrite small business credits. This paper discusses this technology, evaluates the research findings on the effects of this technology on small business credit availability, and links these findings to a number of research...

We investigate benefits to business borrowers from bank bailouts – specifically the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Applying difference-in-difference methodology to loan-level data, we find more favorable contract terms in five dimensions – spread, amount, maturity, collateral, and...

This paper offers a possible explanation for the conflicting empirical results in the literature concerning the relation between loan risk and collateral. Specifically, we posit that different economic characteristics or types of collateral pledges may be associated with the empirical dominance...

Financial crises result in price and quantity rationing of otherwise creditworthy business borrowers, but little is known about the relative severity of these two types of rationing, which borrowers are rationed most, and the roles of foreign and domestic banks. Using a dataset from 50 countries...

We examine how bank efficiency during normal times affects survival, risk, and profitability during subsequent financial crises using data from five U.S. financial crises and preceding normal times. We find cost efficiency during normal times helps reduce bank failure probabilities, decrease...

This paper offers a possible explanation for the conflicting results in the literature concerning the empirical relation between collateral and loan risk. We posit that certain economic characteristics of collateral may be associated with the empirical dominance of different risk-collateral...