Using comprehensive data on bank lending and establishment-level outcomes from 1997–2010, this paper finds that small business lending is an unimportant determinant of small business and overall economic activity. A shift-share style research design is implemented to predict county-level lending shocks using variation in preexisting bank market shares and bank supply shifts. Counties with negative predicted lending shocks experienced declines in small business loan originations, indicating that it is costly to switch lenders. However, small business loan originations have an economically insignificant and generally statistically insignificant impact on both small firm and overall employment during the Great Recession and normal times. (JEL E32, E44, E52, G21, G32, L25)

This paper studies whether distance shapes credit allocation by estimating the impact of bank branch closings during the 2000s on local access to credit. To generate plausibly exogenous variation in the incidence of closings, I use an instrument based on within-county, tract-level variation in exposure to post-merger branch consolidation. Closings lead to a persistent decline in local small business lending. Annual originations fall by $453,000 after a closing, off a baseline of $4.7 million, and remain depressed for up to six years. The effects are very localized, dissipating within six miles, and are especially severe during the financial crisis. (JEL G21, G34, L22, R12, R32)

No abstract

This paper uses quantile regressions to document the increase in hedge funds' Value-at-Risk (VaR) conditional on other styles being under distress and (predictable) spill-over e ects to the banking sector. This increase of conditional VaR is due to an increase in bivariate dependencies in times of stress. We identify six common factors that explain the tail dependence across hedge fund styles. This set of risk factors also explains a large part of hedge funds' expected returns, which unlike the Value-at-Risk, a ect ows into and out of hedge funds style.