Financial innovation has been described as the quot;life blood of efficient and responsive capital markets.quot; Yet, there have been few quantitative investigations of financial innovation and the diffusion of these new technologies. Of the latter, there have been only three prior quantitative...

Financial innovation has been described as the life blood of efficient and responsive capital markets. Yet, few quantitative investigations have studied financial innovations and the diffusion of these new technologies. In this paper, we examine the diffusion of one such technology: credit...

Financial innovation has been described as the "life blood of efficient and responsive capital markets." Yet, there have been few quantitative investigations of financial innovation and the diffusion of these new technologies. Of the latter, there have been only three prior quantitative studies,...

This paper estimates that credit scoring is associated with about a $3,900 increase in small business lending per sample banking organization, per low- and moderate-income (LMI) area served, and this effect is roughly equivalent to that estimated for higher-income areas. For our sample, this...

This paper empirically examines the effect of the use of credit scoring by large banking organizations on small business lending in low- and moderate-income (LMI) areas. Using census tract level data for the southeastern United States, the authors estimate that credit scoring increases small...

The literature has documented a positive relationship between the use of credit scoring for small business loans and small business credit availability, broadly defined. However, this literature is hampered by the fact that all of the studies are based on a single 1998 survey of the very largest...

The Federal Home Loan Bank (FHLB) System is a large, complex, and understudied government-sponsored liquidity facility that currently has more than $1 trillion in secured loans outstanding, mostly to commercial banks and thrifts. This paper first documents the significant role played by the FHLB...

We study recent changes in the geographic distances between small businesses and their bank lenders, using a large random sample of loans guaranteed by the Small Business Administration. Consistent with extant research, we find that small borrower-lender distances generally increased between...

An important theoretical literature motivates collateral as a mechanism that mitigates adverse selection, credit rationing, and other inefficiencies that arise when borrowers hold ex ante private information. There is no clear empirical evidence regarding the central implication of this...

This paper discusses the technological change and financial innovation that commercial banking has experienced during the past twenty-five years. The paper first describes the role of the financial system in economies and how technological change and financial innovation can improve social...