The authors derive optimal financial claim for a bank when the borrowing firm's uninformed stakeholders depend on the bank to establish whether the firm is distressed and whether concessions by stakeholders are necessary. The bank's financial claim is designed to ensure that it cannot collude...

We examine the effects of over 6,000 M&As involving more than 10,000 banks on small business lending. We are the first to decompose the impact of M&As into static effects associated with a simple melding of the antecedent institutions and dynamic effects associated with post-M&A refocusing of...

Are close, long-term relationships between borrowers and lenders feasible in an increasingly competitive financial marketplace? How do relationships that have developed between banks and firms change when firms gain access to alternative funding sources, especially public securities markets? Can...

On September 24-25, 2009, the Research Department and the Payment Cards Center of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia held their fifth joint conference to present and discuss the latest research on consumer credit and payments. Sixty participants attended the conference, which included...

The authors empirically examine the hypothesis that access to deposits with inelastic rates (core deposits) permits a bank to make contractual agreements with borrowers that are infeasible if the bank must pay market rates for its funds. Access to core deposits insulates a bank's costs of funds...