Has information technology improved small businesses' credit access by hardening the information used in loan underwriting and reducing the importance of lender proximity? Previous research, pointing to increasing average lending distances, suggests that it has. Using over 20 years of Community...

Some researchers have used increasing small business lending distances to argue that technological changes have reduced banks' reliance on soft information. These studies generally assume distance changes are uniform across loans and lenders. Our paper examines heterogeneity in distance changes....

The authors find that firms that face higher upfront commitment fees, risk premium spreads, or usage fees have smaller credit lines, while those with higher overdraft fees have larger ones. Firms with greater profit growth in the past have larger credit lines, while those with more internal...