This paper examines how bank merger and acquisition activity affected small business lending in local U.S. banking markets between 1994 and 2000, focusing particularly on the role that community banks played in determining the ultimate effects of consolidation. During the 1994-1997 period, we...

We estimate the benefits of intrastate and interstate geographic diversification for bank risk and return, and assess whether such benefits could be shaped by differences in bank size and disparities in economic conditions within states or across U.S. states. For small banks, only intrastate...

This paper uses the relatively new CRA small business loan data to examine how bank consolidation has been related to small business lending within a bank's local community - particularly to borrowers having more modest economic prospects, such as very small businesses or those located in low-...

The payday advance industry makes small, very short-term consumer loans through an extensive network of storefront shops. Customer demand for this product appears to be very strong, and the industry has grown dramatically over the past decade. Yet many observers view the industry with suspicion....

This article first explores some of the more significant characteristics of community banking, examining the importance of community banks in small-business lending in terms of their ability to handle quot;softquot; data, their tendency to rely on retail deposits for funding, and their emphasis...

How important a role do commercial banks play in funding nonfinancial borrowing? Ten years after the end of the industry's most significant crisis since the Great Depression, does banking remain a major player in financing the nation's economic activity? This paper examines the evolving role...

Improving off-site monitoring capabilities would enable regulatory agencies to allocate supervisory resources more efficiently and intervene more promptly and would reduce the costs associated with bank failures. For these reasons we investigate the extent to which state-level economic data...

We estimate the benefits of intrastate and interstate geographic diversification for bank risk and return, and assess whether such benefits could be shaped by differences in bank size and disparities in economic conditions within states or across U.S. states. For small banks, only intrastate...