We empirically examine whether a major government intervention in the small-firm credit market yields significantly better results in markets that are less financially developed. The government intervention that we investigate is SBA-guaranteed lending. The literature on financing small and...

The guaranteed lending programs of the Small Business Administration (SBA) are large and growing rapidly. The SBA’s fiscal year 2008 performance budget calls for $25 billion in guaranteed loans for small businesses—a new record for the agency. Some critics of SBA programs suggest they do not...

In the presence of imperfect information, both large and small banks try to find alternative ways to identify creditworthy borrowers. Lending relationships are one way to go about this. Relationships between banks and small businesses tend to be much closer than those between banks and large...

We empirically test whether SBA-guaranteed lending has a greater impact on economic performance in markets with a high percentage of potential minority small businesses. This hypothesis is predicated on priors related to three overlapping assumptions. These three assumptions are: (1) The classic...

SBA guaranteed-lending programs are one of many government-sponsored market interventions aimed at promoting small business. The rationale for providing SBA loan guarantees is often based on the argument that they reduce credit rationing in low-income markets for small business loans. In this...

In this paper we empirically test whether the Small Business Administration’s main guaranteed lending program—the 7(a) program—has a greater impact on economic performance in low-income markets than in others. This hypothesis is predicated on our previous research (Craig, Jackson, and...