Changes in the economic environment where banks and small businesses operate have raised questions about the availability of credit to small businesses. Small businesses have fewer alternatives to external finance than do large companies. A brief overview of small firm financing is offered,...

While large firms are financed through public, visible institutions such as the stock market, private firms are financed through less visible, information scarce means – e.g., private equity or debt financing. At different points in a firm's financial growth cycle – at different stages of...

Explores the role of bank-borrower relationships in small firm finance. Focus is on the availability and terms of lines of credit approved by banks. Data were obtained from the U.S. National Survey of Small Business Finances conducted in 1988-89. Telephone interviews were conducted with...

We jointly analyze the static, selection, and dynamic effects of domestic, foreign, and state ownership on bank performance. We argue that it is important to include indicators of all the relevant governance effects in the same model. quot;Nonrobustnessquot; checks (which purposely exclude some...

Large and foreign-owned institutions may have difficulty extending relationship loans to informationally opaque small firms. Bank distress does not appear to affect small business lending, although even small firms may react to bank distress by borrowing from multiple banks.Consolidation of the...

The authors jointly analyze the static, selection, and dynamic effects of domestic, foreign, and state ownership on bank performance. They argue that it is important to include indicators of all the relevant governance effects in the same model. "Nonrobustness" checks (which purposely exclude...

The authors propose a more complete conceptual framework for analysis of credit availability for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). In this framework, lending technologies are the key conduit through which government policies and national financial structures affect credit availability. They...

Stylized facts suggest that bank lending behavior is highly procyclical. We test a new hypothesis that may help explain why this occurs. The institutional memory hypothesis is driven by deterioration in the ability of loan officers over the bank's lending cycle that results in an easing of...

Market size structure refers to the distribution of shares of different size classes of local market participants, where the sizes are inclusive of assets both within and outside the local market. We apply this new measure of market structure in two empirical analyses of the U.S. banking...

This paper models the inner workings of relationship lending, the implications for bank organizational structure, and the effects of shocks to the economic environment on the availability of relationship credit to small businesses. Relationship lending depends on the accumulation over time by...