This paper uses data from the Federal Reserve Board’s 1998 and 2003 Surveys of Small Business Finances (SSBFs) to examine the evolving relationship between community banks and small businesses. The SSBFs provide extensive data on the types of financial services used by small businesses and the...

Deregulation and technological change have reduced the transactions costs that led to the dominance of local financial service suppliers, leading some to question if distance still matters in banking. This debate has been particularly acute in small business banking, where transactions costs are...

In antitrust analysis of bank mergers, banking markets are viewed as geographically local, with a "cluster" of products as the relevant product line. This view is criticized as outdated, now that many bank products are offered by nonbank institutions and financial institutions' operations are...

Trade credit--credit extended by a seller who does not require immediate payment for delivery of a product--is an important source of funds for business customers. In 1987, such credit accounted for about 15 percent of the liabilities of nonfarm nonfinancial businesses in the United States,...

The 2003 Survey of Small Business Finances (SSBF) screening interview had significant unit nonresponse and therefore some type of nonresponse adjustment was deemed necessary. The approach used in the 2003 survey differed from that used in previous surveys. The current paper examines the impact...

In 2003, the Survey of Small Business Finances (SSBF), conducted by the Federal Reserve Board, implemented the use of incentives to increase response rates. This study examines the effects of some of the characteristics of the implementation - such as level of effort, time in queue, and...