In analyzing the competitive impacts of bank consolidations, banking agencies and the U.S. Department of Justice tend to rely on the assumption that the market for bank services is local and is for services offered only by banks. This approach allows analysts to merge all products and services...

With banks still facing challenges, alternative sources of credit are likely to play an increasingly important role in financing small businesses. The authors describe what ACCION USA has learned as its approach to microlending has evolved.

Recent developments in the capital markets aim to bring improved liquidity and other benefits to lenders, mostly through the sale of securities backed by small business and even microenterprise loans.

We offer evidence that interest rate spreads on syndicated loans to corporate borrowers are economically significantly smaller in Europe than in the U.S., other things equal. Differences in borrower, loan and lender characteristics associated with equilibrium mechanisms suggested in the...

The Federal Reserve's quarterly Survey of Terms of Business Lending, which has been conducted for more than twenty years, collects information on interest rates and other characteristics of commercial bank business loans. The survey has been changed from time to time to recognize innovations in...

After growing rapidly during much of the 1990s, the real value of commercial and industrial (C&I) loans at domestic commercial banks and at U.S. branches and agencies of foreign banks has fallen 19 percent since the beginning of 2001. The recent contraction in business loans has been...