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...

We test whether rural versus urban location, and the amount of social capital present in those locations, influence the performance of Small Business Administration (SBA) 7(a) loans originated between 1984 and 2012. On average, we find that rural loans are about 11% less likely to default than...

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...

This paper provides empirical confirmation for Petersen and Rajan's (2002) widely accepted conjecture that information technology was the primary driver of the observed increase in small business borrower-lender distances in the United States in recent years. Using a different data source for...

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...

We develop a theoretical model of decision-making under risk and uncertainty in which bank lenders have both imperfect information about loan applications and imperfect ability to make decisions based on that information. We test the loan-default implications of the model for a large random...