A firm’s passage from borrowing from a single lender to using multiple lenders is often viewed as an inevitable progression in the life of a firm. While there is a strong element of truth in this view, it is also incomplete. The underlying economics of moving from one lender to many involves...

Mitchell Berlin examines disclosure requirements for banks. Can market participants play a significant role in ensuring that banks limit their risk-taking? Although regulators find this idea increasingly attractive, economists generally have two schools of thought: Such monitoring could...

This paper views financial intermediaries as vertically integrated firms. The authors explore how competitive conditions in retail and wholesale funding markets affect the incentive for (upstream) originators and (downstream) fund managers to integrate. The underlying tradeoff in our model is...

The authors provide some preliminary evidence on the costs and profitability of relationship lending by commercial banks. Drawing on recent research that has identified loan rate smoothing as a significant element in lending relationships between banks and firms, the authors carry out a...

On September 20-21, 2007, the Research Department and the Payment Cards Center of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia held their fourth joint conference to present and discuss the latest research on consumer credit payments. Approximately 75 participants attended the conference, which...

Although many people know the term venture capital, not many people know precisely what role venture capitalists play in the economy. How do they identify entrepreneurs with promising new ideas? What kinds of services do they provide to these entrepreneurs? Mitchell Berlin answers these and...