Under the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), banks can fulfill their obligation to meet local credit needs either by lending in low-to-moderate-income (LMI) communities or by purchasing loans made by others. This paper evaluates whether CRA credit for purchases has had its intended effect of...

Under the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) banks can fulfill their affirmative obligation to meet local credit needs by lending in low-to-moderate-income (LMI) communities or by purchasing loans made by others. This paper evaluates whether giving CRA credit for purchases has had its intended...

I use peer-to-peer (P2P) credit markets to study how innovations in housing affect households' unsecured credit decisions. Driven by homeowners, I find that a one standard deviation increase in house price growth causes loan origination growth to decrease by 44% of its mean. Conversely, renters...

We investigate whether the securitization of corporate loans affected banks' lending standards. We find that during the boom years of the CLO business, loans sold to CLOs at the time of their origination underperform matched unsecuritized loans originated by the same bank. This finding is robust...

Recent years have seen a new trend in commercial bank lending—loans with no financial covenants. These covenant light, or cov-lite, loans raise concerns about excessive risk to lenders due to lack of monitoring. In this study, we examine the consequences of cov-lite loans. Focusing on rated,...

Bank deregulation in the form of the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act facilitated the entry of non-bank lenders into the market for syndicated loans during the pre-2008 credit boom. Institutional investors disproportionately purchase tranches of loans originated by universal banks able to...