This article tests several hypotheses concerning the failure of thrift institutions and the costs these failures imposed upon the thrift deposit insurance fund. The central hypothesis posits that thrift failures during the 1986-1989 period were largely a function of portfolio decisions made by...

The informational opacity of small businesses makes them an interesting area for the study of banks' lending practices and procedures. We use a survey of small businesses conducted by the Federal Reserve to analyze the micro-level differences between large banks and small banks in the loan...

The informational opacity of small businesses makes them an interesting area for the study of banks' lending practices and procedures. We use data from a survey of small businesses to analyze the micro-level differences in the loan-approval processes of large and small banks. We provide evidence...

The recent consolidation in the banking system has focused attention on the difference in lending between large and small banks, since large banks lend proportionally less to small business. We use a newly available survey of small business finances conducted by the Federal Reserve System to...