This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Abstract: We assess the impact of bank deregulation on the distribution of income in the United States. From the 1970s through the 1990s, most states removed restrictions on intrastate branching, which intensified bank competition and improved bank performance. Exploiting the cross-state, cross-time variation in the timing of branch deregulation, we find that deregulation materially tightened the distribution of income by boosting incomes in the lower part of the income distribution while having little impact on incomes above the median. The results suggest that regulatory impediments to competition among banks during the 20th century were disproportionally harmful to lower income workers. We also find that the impact of bank deregulation on income inequality is accounted for by an increase in the relative wage rates and working hours of unskilled workers, and not by lower-income households financing additional education or starting new businesses.
Permanent repository linkJEL Codes: G28, G21, D31
Exploiting the differential financing needs across industrial sectors, this paper shows that financing constraints of small businesses in the United States are one of the drivers explaining the unemployment dynamics during the Great Recession. We show that workers in small firms are more likely to become unemployed during the 2007-09 financial crisis if they work in industries with high external financing needs. We find very similar results for the 1990-91 recession, but not for the 2001 recession, where only the former was associated with a reduction in loan supply. These findings further support the credit constraints hypothesis.
Policymakers and economists disagree about the impact of bank regulations on the distribution of income. Exploiting cross-state and cross-time variation, we test whether liberalizing restrictions on intra-state branching in the United States intensified, ameliorated, or had no effect on income distribution. We find that branch deregulation lowered income inequality. Deregulation lowered income inequality by affecting labor market conditions, not by boosting the business income of the poor, nor by enhancing educational attainment. Reductions in the earnings gap between men and women and between skilled and unskilled workers account for the bulk of the explained drop in income inequality. JEL Codes: G28, D31, O16
for very useful discussions. We are grateful to Kerwin Charles and Jonathan Guryan for sharing their data. We thank the Watson Institute for financial support. The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peerreviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.
This paper exploits the differential financing needs across industrial sectors and provides strong empirical evidence that financing constraints of small businesses in the United States are important in explaining the unemployment dynamics during the Great Recession. We show that workers in small firms are more likely to become unemployed during the 2007-09 financial crisis if they work in industries with high external financing needs. We find very similar results for the 1990-91 recession, but not for the 2001 recession, where only the former was associated with a reduction in loan supply. These findings further support the credit constraints hypothesis.
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