This paper analyzes costly favoritism related to physical attractiveness and gender in bank loan markets using a market structure-based method. The rationale is that a concentrated market provides more space for loan officers to discriminate against a certain group of borrowers. Using several...

The profound influence of the 2008 financial crisis has renewed interests in the financial instability hypothesis of Minsky, which attributes financial crisis to credit-intensive booms. This paper investigates the relationship between credit growth and the probability of a banking crisis based...