We study third-party loan guarantees in a model in which lenders can screen, learn loan quality over time and can sell loans before maturity when in need of liquidity. Loan guarantees improve market liquidity and reduce lending standards, with a positive overall welfare effect. Guarantees...

We use a natural experiment and matched bank/firm data to identify the effects of bank guarantees on allocative efficiency. We find that with guarantees in place unproductive firms invest more and maintain higher rates of sales growth. Moreover, firms produce less productively. Firms also...

The efficiency of federal lending guarantees depends on whether guarantees increase lending supply, or simply act as a subsidy to lenders. We use notches in the guarantee rate schedule for loans backed by the Small Business Administration to estimate the elasticity of bank lending volume to loan...

Exchange rate movements during the global financial crisis of 2007–09 were unusual. Unlike in two previous episodes – the Asian crisis of 1997–98 and the crisis following the Russian debt default in 1998 – in 2008 many countries that were not at the centre of the crisis saw their...