The Main Street Lending Program (MSLP) was established by the Federal Reserve to supply credit to small and, especially, midsize businesses so they could weather COVID-19–induced disruptions. This study uses Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) data on the financial condition and overall viability of firms...

We utilize Dun & Bradstreet data on firms’ financial condition to examine the allocation of Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans and their impact. Three main findings emerge. First, firms in better financial condition prior to the COVID outbreak were advantaged in the allocation of PPP...

This paper develops a unified theory of bank operations that integrates theories of financial intermediation, asset pricing, and production. In a simple dynamic model, banks maximize the present value of future profits generated through three categories of qualitatively distinct functions: (1)...

The anemic pace of the recovery of the U.S. economy from the Great Recession has frequently been blamed on heightened uncertainty, much of which concerns the nation's fiscal policy. Intuition suggests that increased policy uncertainty likely has different impacts on industries with different...

The anemic pace of the recovery of the U. S. economy from the Great Recession has frequently been blamed on heightened uncertainty, much of which concerns the nation’s fiscal policy. Intuition suggests that increased policy uncertainty likely has different impacts on different industries, to...

In September 1997, the U.S. Treasury developed the TIPS market in order to achieve three important policy objectives: (1) to provide consumers with a class of assets that allows for hedging against real interest rate risk, (2) to provide holders of nominal contracts a means of hedging against...

This policy brief summarizes the findings of the Survey of Community Banks conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston in May 2010. This survey seeks to understand how the supply of, and demand for, bank business loans changed in the period following the financial crisis. The survey design...

Financial institutions often do not charge explicit fees for the services they provide, but are instead compensated by the spread between interest rates on loans and deposits. The lack of explicit fees in lending makes it difficult to measure the output of banks and other financial institutions....

The measurement of bank output, a difficult and contentious issue, has become even more important in the aftermath of the devastating financial crisis of recent years. In this paper, we argue that models of banks as processors of information and transactions imply a quantity measure of bank...

This policy brief examines the impact of student loan debt on individuals' homeownership status and wealth accumulation, employing a rich set of financial and demographic variables that are not available in many of the existing studies that use credit bureau data. It is important to understand...