Having a credit record and a credit score can be an important determinant of credit access. Yet, surprisingly little is known about people who lack credit records or scores. This paper provides the first documented analysis of the characteristics of consumers without credit records, called...

Under the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) banks can fulfill their affirmative obligation to meet local credit needs by lending in low-to-moderate-income (LMI) communities or by purchasing loans made by others. This paper evaluates whether giving CRA credit for purchases has had its intended...

Many homeowners miss significant savings by not refinancing when interest rates are low. Among those who may find refinancing difficult are borrowers with balances below $150,000. Low-balance mortgagors pay proportionally more closing costs, are offered higher interest rates, and may find fewer...

Some researchers have used increasing small business lending distances to argue that technological changes have reduced banks' reliance on soft information. These studies generally assume distance changes are uniform across loans and lenders. Our paper examines heterogeneity in distance changes....

Little empirical work exists on the substitutability of depository institutions. In particular, the willingness of consumers to substitute banks for thrifts and to switch between multimarket and single-market institutions (i.e., institutions with large vs. small branch networks) has been of...

In a seminal article on small business lending, Petersen & Rajan (2002) argue that technological changes have revolutionized small business lending markets, weakening the reliance of small businesses on local lenders and increasing geographic distances between firms and their credit suppliers....

The willingness of consumers to substitute between banks and thrifts and between multimarket and single-market institutions is of strong interest to policymakers, yet little empirical work exists in this area. We estimate a structural model of consumer choice of depository institutions using a...