Small business lending has historically been very local, but distances between small businesses and their lenders have steadily increased over the last forty years. This paper investigates a new lending strategy made possible by distant small business lending: industry specialization. Using data...

In this paper, I quantify the extent to which financial constraints limit the scope of activity of small firms, influence their labor decisions, and impact their ultimate survival. Using the U.S. branching deregulation from the 1990s, I document that local markets within deregulated states...