Small Business Lending Research Articles

Limitations of small and medium business lending in Kazakhstan: factors affecting access to finance

This paper aims to investigate factors affecting the access of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)to external financing in Kazakhstan. The data set of this research is obtained from the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Surveys (BEEPS) conducted by the World Bank in Kazakhstan in 2019. The results of the analysis showed that such factors as revenue, the availability of collateral, previously received loans, have a positive impact on the decision to grant a loan by financial institutions. However, the results of the analysis did not show a statistically significant effect of the size and age of the enterprise on access to credit, which was proved by a number of studies in other countries. The results of the analysis also showed that access to external financing is significantly limited for enterprises implementing innovative products or services, which is explained by the riskiness of these enterprises from the point of view of creditors. It is interesting to note that the analysis showed a statistically significant positive relationship between access to credit and a female manager, which proves that there is no discrimination on gender grounds when making a decision to issue a loan in Kazakhstan. The results obtained can be used to develop more effective conditions for lending to SMEs, as well as to improve scoring models for SMEs, where the main criteria may be the history and potential of the company, rather than the current financial situation and the availability of collateral.

Bank Concentration and Local Labor Markets

I use a quasi-experimental design supplied by bank anti-trust policy to inspect how bank concentration impacts local labor market outcomes. The regulator applies a cutoff rule when dealing with bank mergers such that markets directly below this regulatory cutoff see an increase in bank concentration, while ones directly above this cutoff do not. Markets that are just below the cutoff see an increase in their deposit-HHI as well as a decrease in their small business lending. A rise in county-level deposit-HHI of 142 points leads to a rise in the county's unemployment rate of 0.284 percentage points, a decline in employment of 0.5 percent, and a decline in average wages of 1 percent. The decline in employment is concentrated in tradable and bank dependent industries, suggesting that the employment effect is due to lower small business lending by banks. These employment effects are also concentrated in black neighborhoods, which also see a larger small business lending and entrepreneurship declines relative to other areas in the markets that receive the positive concentration shock. This paper is the first to show that local labor market conditions respond to changes in local bank concentration, and also that lower small business lending and entrepreneurship in black areas lead to disproportionately larger negative employment effects for these areas.

Buying the Vote? The Economics of Electoral Politics and Small-Business Loans

AbstractWe study the relation between electoral politics and government small-business lending, employment, and business formation. We construct novel measures of electoral importance capturing swing and base voters using data from Facebook ad spending, independent political expenditures, the Cook Political Report, and campaign contributions. We find that businesses in electorally important states, districts, and sectors receive more loans following the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, controlling for funding demand and both health and economic conditions. Estimates from survey and observational data show that electoral politics and the allocation of government funds affect employment, small-business activity, and business applications.

Local Concentration in the Small Business Lending Market and Its Relationship to the Deposit Market

<ns2:p>This note analyzes competition and concentration in the small business lending market using data obtained from Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) disclosures and data on local branches from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation's (FDIC) Summary of Deposits (SOD). In 1963, the Supreme Court defined the product market for commercial banking.</ns2:p>

Large banks and small firm lending

We examine the long-lasting effects of the 2007 real estate price collapse on small business credit supply. Banks affected by the decline in real estate prices systematically contracted their credit to small firms. At the same time, regional and local banks, many of which were unaffected by the initial shock, increased small business lending to nearby borrowers and opportunistically expanded their branch networks, making gains in market share that persisted for the following decade. Although the net effect of the contraction in credit was negative, we show that opportunistic expansion tied to permanent market changes is an important offsetting force that dampened the negative effect on small firms during the GFC and its aftermath.

Electoral Politics and the Allocation of Government Capital

We study the role of electoral politics in government small business lending, employment, and business formation. We construct novel measures of electoral importance capturing swing and base voters using data from Facebook ad spending, independent political expenditures, the Cook Political Report, and campaign contributions. We find that businesses in electorally important states, districts, and sectors receive more loans following the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, controlling for funding demand and both health and economic conditions. Estimates from survey and observational data show that government funding weakens the adverse effects of the crisis on employment, small business activity, and business applications.

Small Business Lending Under the PPP and PPPLF Programs

We examine the effects of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and the PPP Liquidity Facility (PPPLF) on small business lending. The PPP was launched under the CARES Act of March 2020 to provide support for small businesses under the COVID-19 pandemic, while the PPPLF was an affiliated program administered by the Federal Reserve to facilitate the maintenance of liquidity among banks participating in the PPP. We use Call Report data to examine the contributions of these two programs on small business and farm lending by individual commercial banks in the United States. As participation in the programs was associated with lending to small businesses directly, we use an instrumental variables (IV) approach to identify a causal effect of the programs on lending based on historical bank relationships with the Small Business Administration that administered the PPP. Our results suggest that both the PPP and the PPPLF had a marked positive effect on growth in small business and farm lending over the first half of 2020. However, while the PPP seemed to encourage greater lending growth by banks of all asset sizes, only small- and medium-sized bank lending was significantly influenced by participation in the PPPLF. We also find that while both programs had significant positive effects on small business lending, they did not influence small loans to farms over this period, which is likely due to a structural feature of the PPP. Finally, while participation in both programs increased bank balance sheets, we find that risk-adjusted bank capital ratios actually improved with PPP and PPPLF participation.

Unintended Consequences of Unemployment Insurance Benefits: The Role of Banks

<ns3:p>We use disaggregated U.S. data and a border discontinuity design to show that more generous unemployment insurance (UI) policies lower bank deposits. We test several channels that could explain this decline and find evidence consistent with households lowering their precautionary savings. Since deposits are the largest and most stable source of funding for banks, the decrease in deposits affects bank lending. Banks that raise deposits in states with generous UI policies squeeze their small business lending. Furthermore, counties that are served by these banks experience a higher unemployment rate and lower wage growth.</ns3:p>

The Role of Regulation and Competition in Information Production and Credit Allocation: Evidence from Small Business Lending

Do policies that promote credit access have an impact on targeted borrowers? To address this question, we develop a theoretical model of information production, regulation and bank competition and test its predictions using the Community Reinvestment Act's small businesses lending program. The analysis reveals that, on average, regulation-induced surge of loans leads to an improvement in the credit score of small businesses. However, the effect vanishes in markets with high demand-adjusted bank competition, due to weaker bank incentives for information production. In order to improve credit allocation across all local markets, interventions should also enact policies that lower information costs.

Housing bust, bank lending & employment: Evidence from multimarket banks

Abstract Using geographic variation in bank lending, I study how bank real estate losses affected the supply of credit and employment during the Great Recession. Banks exposed to distressed housing markets cut mortgage and small business lending relative to other banks in the same county. This lending contraction had real effects, as counties whose banks were exposed to adverse shocks in other markets suffered employment declines, especially in young firms and bank dependent industries. This credit contraction also caused wages to fall and consumer delinquencies to rise, contributing to subsequent declines in nontradable employment.

Finance and Firm Volatility: Evidence from Small Business Lending in China

The online trading platform Alibaba provides financial technology (FinTech) credit for millions of micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs). Using a novel data set of daily sales and an internal credit score threshold that governs the allocation of credit, we apply a fuzzy regression discontinuity design (RDD) to explore the causal effect of credit access on firm volatility. We find that credit access significantly reduces firm sales volatility and that the effect is stronger for firms with fewer alternative sources of financing. We further look at firm exit probability and find that firms with access to FinTech credit are less likely to go bankrupt or exit the business in the future. Additional channel tests reveal that firms with FinTech credit invest more in advertising and product/sector diversification, particularly during business downturns, which serves as effective mechanisms through which credit access reduces firm volatility. Overall, our findings contribute to a better understanding of the role of FinTech credit in MSMEs. This paper was accepted by Haoxiang Zhu, finance.

Financing woes: estimating the impact of MSME financing gap on financial structure practices of firm owners

PurposeAccessing formal mainstream finance is a cumbersome process for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) of emerging economies. Empirical investigations have connected finance accessibility to financing gap that restricts MSMEs from borrowing through formal channels. The purpose of this study is to explore the influence of financing gap on firms' financial structure (FS) practices. In this regard, the research framework divides financing gap into four dimensions, namely: demand gap (DG), supply gap (SG), knowledge gap (KG) and empathy gap (EG).Design/methodology/approachThe paper adopts a quantitative approach to establish the underlying relationship between the variables. The participants of the self-structured questionnaire survey were 219 MSME owners from manufacturing, trading and service industries. The results are inferred through the partial least squares structural equation modeling (SEM) technique.FindingsThe findings recognise a significant impact of financing gap on the FS practices of firm owners. The financing constraints contributing to KG, SG and EG are found to be extending the unwillingness of firm owners to borrow through formal channels. Further, the results also confirm the influence of financing gap on the pecking order framework (POF) of MSMEs' FS.Practical implicationsThe study offers the perspective and hesitance of MSME owners towards mainstream financing. The key findings are useful for the financial intermediaries and policymakers, who need to be sensitive and proactive in their small business lending process.Originality/valueThe study adds to the limited evidence of various dimensions of financing gap. It also addresses the role of financing gap on the conscious preferences of MSME owners towards the informal source of financing along with the POF.

Is Lending Distance Really Changing? Distance Dynamics and Loan Composition in Small Business Lending

<ns2:p>Has information technology improved small businesses' access to credit by hardening the information used in loan underwriting and reducing the importance of proximity to lenders? Previous research, pointing to increasing average lending distances, suggests that it has. But this conclusion can obscure differences across loans and lenders. Using over 20 years of Community Reinvestment Act data on small business lending, we find that while average distances have increased substantially, distances at individual banks remain unchanged. Instead, average distance has increased because a small group of lenders specializing in high-volume, small-loan lending nationwide have increased their share of small business lending by 10 percentage points. Our findings imply that small businesses continue to depend on local banks.</ns2:p>

The Impact of Federal Home Loan Bank (FHLB) Advances on Small Business Lending by Community Banks—2010–2016

Abstract In this paper, we examine the relationship between small business loan growth and growth in core deposits and Federal Home Loan Banks (FHLBs) advances from 2010 to 2016. Controlling for other effects, we find that the relationships between small business loan growth is positively and significantly related to both FHLB advance growth and core deposit growth, with the coefficient on advance growth being significantly larger than the coefficient on core deposits over the entire sample period. We also tested whether this relationship changed after 2014:3 reflecting the Federal Reserve’s relaxation of the regulatory burden on smaller banks. We find that the relationship between loan growth and core deposit growth became more positive after the change, but the relationship between loan growth and FHLB advance growth did not. As a result, we could no longer reject the hypothesis that the coefficient on core deposit growth was equal to the coefficient on FHLB advance growth after 2014:3. This provides some empirical support that the regulatory changes in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 (DFA) influenced small business lending by strengthening the impact of the growth in core deposits on the growth of small business lending, complementing the work of Bordo and Duca (2018) that changes in DFA had some unintended negative consequences for lending to small businesses. It also suggests that lowering the regulatory burden faced by community banks (which have a larger proportion of core deposits to total assets than non-community banks) could improve the incentive to increase small business lending. It also implies that FHLB advances remain an important funding tool at the margin to give commercial banking organizations greater liquidity and flexibility in funding their balance sheets.

Racial Disparities in Small Business Lending

We study the magnitude and nature of racial disparities in the U.S. small business credit market. Exploiting a unique dataset containing rich loan contract information, including firm and lender characteristics, we document sizable racial differentials in small business lending, measured by loan denial rates and interest rates between black-owned businesses and otherwise observationally identical white-owned businesses. Such racial disparities are most pronounced in areas associated with severe racial bias against blacks. Critically, we show that an exogenous increase in bank competition due to bank deregulation has a quantitatively large effect in reducing racial disparities in small business lending, and such a reduction is primarily driven by entrant banks, as the Becker (1957) theory of racial prejudice predicts.

Racial Disparities in Access to Small Business Credit: Evidence from the Paycheck Protection Program

We explore the sources of racial disparities in small business lending by studying the $806 billion Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which was designed to support small business jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic. PPP loans were administered by private lenders but federally guaranteed, largely eliminating unobservable credit risk as a factor in explaining differential lending by race. We document that even after controlling for a firm’s zip code, industry, loan size, PPP approval date, and other characteristics, Black-owned businesses were 12.1 percentage points (70% of the mean) more likely to obtain their PPP loan from a fintech lender than a traditional bank. Among conventional lenders, smaller banks were much less likely to lend to Black-owned firms, while the Top-4 banks exhibited little to no disparity after including controls. We use novel data to show that the disparity is not primarily explained by differences in pre-existing bank or credit relationships, firm financial positions, fintech affinity, or borrower application behavior. In contrast, we document that Black-owned businesses’ higher rate of borrowing from fintechs compared to smaller banks is particularly large in places with high racial animus, pointing to a potential role for discrimination in explaining some of the racial disparities in small business lending. We find evidence that when small banks automate their lending processes, and thus reduce human involvement in the loan origination process, their rate of PPP lending to Black-owned businesses increases, with larger effects in places with more racial animus.

Racial Disparities in Access to Small Business Credit: Evidence from the Paycheck Protection Program

We explore the sources of racial disparities in small business lending by studying the $806 billion Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which was designed to support small business jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic. PPP loans were administered by private lenders but federally guaranteed, largely eliminating unobservable credit risk as a factor in explaining differential lending by race. We document that even after controlling for a firm’s zip code, industry, loan size, PPP approval date, and other characteristics, Black-owned businesses were 12.1 percentage points (70% of the mean) more likely to obtain their PPP loan from a fintech lender than a traditional bank. Among conventional lenders, smaller banks were much less likely to lend to Black-owned firms, while the Top-4 banks exhibited little to no disparity after including controls. We use novel data to show that the disparity is not primarily explained by differences in pre-existing bank or credit relationships, firm financial positions, fintech affinity, or borrower application behavior. In contrast, we document that Black-owned businesses’ higher rate of borrowing from fintechs compared to smaller banks is particularly large in places with high racial animus, pointing to a potential role for discrimination in explaining some of the racial disparities in small business lending. We find evidence that when small banks automate their lending processes, and thus reduce human involvement in the loan origination process, their rate of PPP lending to Black-owned businesses increases, with larger effects in places with more racial animus.

Does the Community Reinvestment Act Increase Small Business Lending in Lower Income Neighborhoods?

We estimate the impact of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) on small business lending in lower-income neighborhoods. Using 2004-2016 panel data on census tracts, we apply a combined regression discontinuity and fixed effect method. We find that the number of small business loans increases by about 3 to 4 percent and the total dollar amount of small business loans by about 6 to 10 percent in tracts becoming treated by the CRA. The results are robust along many dimensions and suggest that the CRA has a positive impact on access to finance for small businesses in lower income areas.

Regulatory Risk Perception and Small Business Lending

We study how Small Business Administration (SBA) employees respond to salient defaults. Using novel data to identify employees transferring across SBA offices, we find that defaults on SBA loans in their previous workplace reduce SBA loans in their current workplace. The effect is independent of local risk conditions and the informational content of the non-local defaults, consistent with a mechanical updating of risk perceptions among local SBA employees and inconsistent with rational learning. The local SBA loan market becomes geographically clustered and concentrated among fewer borrowers and lenders, especially those who have prior relationships with the SBA, suggesting higher barriers for participation.

Personal Income Taxes and Small Business Lending

I investigate whether and how personal income taxes impact bank lending to small businesses. My empirical design exploits staggered statutory changes of state personal tax in the U.S. as identification and compares loans granted in geographically adjacent counties across state borders with relative tax changes during 2001-2018. I find that higher personal tax rate has significantly negative effects on loan outcomes, including smaller loan size, shorter maturity, higher default probability and higher charge-off ratio. I further find significantly smaller number and amount of small business loans in high-tax localities. These novel evidences suggest personal tax-induced distortion in borrower’s creditworthiness constrains local banks’ lending to small businesses.