In this study, we analyze why U.S. commercial banks failed during the recent financial crisis. We find that proxies for commercial real estate investments, as well as traditional proxies for the CAMELS components, do an excellent job in explaining the failures of banks that were closed during...

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...