International business literature widely recognizes that political forces play a crucial role in modern corporations. Yet, rare are the studies of how foreign operations mitigate the detrimental effect that firm-level political exposure has on the cost of lending. We study such channels in a...

Using a unique corporate loans dataset for entrepreneurs with small and microenterprises, this paper examines how educational attainment affects bank credit decisions and subsequent individual and firm outcomes. Our results highlight a "Matthew Effect," where an initial advantage is...

Analyzing unique data on loan applications by individuals who are majority owners of small firms, we detail how a bank's credit decisions affect their future income. We use the bank's cutoff rule, which is based on the applicants' credit scores, as the discontinuous locus providing exogenous...