Does Function Follow Organizational Form? Evidence From the Lending Practices of Large and Small Banks

Theories based on incomplete contracting suggest that small organizations may do better than large organizations in activities that require the processing of soft information. We explore this idea in the context of bank lending to small firms, an activity that is typically thought of as relying heavily on soft information. We find that large banks are less willing than small banks to lend to informationally 'difficult' credits, such as firms that do not keep formal financial records. Moreover, controlling for the endogeneity of bank-firm matching, large banks lend at a greater distance, interact more impersonally with their borrowers, have shorter and less exclusive relationships, and do not alleviate credit constraints as effectively. All of this is consistent with small banks being better able to collect and act on soft information than large banks.

Does Function Follow Organzizational Form? Evidence From the Lending Practices of Large and Small Banks

Theories based on incomplete contracting suggest that small organizations may do better than large organizations in activities that require the processing of soft information. We explore this idea in the context of bank lending to small firms, an activity that is typically thought of as relying heavily on soft information. We find that large banks are less willing than small banks to lend to informationally “difficult†credits, such as firms that do not keep formal financial records. Moreover, controlling for the endogeneity of bank-firm matching, large banks lend at a greater distance, interact more impersonally with their borrowers, have shorter and less exclusive relationships, and do not alleviate credit constraints as effectively. All of this is consistent with small banks being better able to collect and act on soft information than large banks. The opinions in this paper do not necessarily reflect those of the Federal Reserve Board or its staff. This work has been supported by the National Science Foundation (Rajan, Stein), and the George J. Stigler Center for Study of the State and Economy (Rajan). Thanks also to seminar participants at Yale, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Tulane, Babson, the University of Illinois, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago Bank Structure Conference, the NBER and the Western Finance Association meetings, as well as to Abhijit Banerjee, Michael Kremer, David Scharfstein, Andrei Shleifer, Greg Udell, Christopher Udry and James Weston for helpful comments and suggestions.

Rating the Financial Health of U.S. Production Agriculture using Synthetic Credit Rating

Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Production Economics,

Mass Models and Sunyaev-Zeldovich Effect Predictions for a Flux Limited Sample of 22 Nearby X-Ray Clusters

We define a 90% complete, volume-limited sample of 31 z<0.1 x-ray clusters and present a systematic analysis of public ROSAT PSPC data on 22 of these objects. Our efforts are undertaken in support of the Penn/OVRO SZE survey, and to this end we present predictions for the inverse Compton optical depth towards all 22 of these clusters. We have performed detailed Monte Carlo simulations to understand the effects of the cluster profile uncertainties on the SZE predictions given the OVRO 5.5-meter telescope beam and switching patterns; we find that the profile uncertainties are one of the least significant components of our error budget for SZE-based distance measurements. We also present baryonic masses and baryon mass fractions derived under the assumption of hydrostatic equilibrium for these 22 clusters. The mean baryonic mass fraction within R_500 \sim 500 h^-1 kpc is (7.02 \pm 0.28) x 10^-2 h^-3/2, or (19.8 \pm 0.8) x 10^-2 for h=0.5. We confirm the Allen et al. (1993) claim of an excess absorbing column density towards Abell 478, but do not find similar anomalies in the other 21 clusters in our sample. We also find some evidence for an excess of soft counts in the ROSAT PSPC data. A measurement of H_o using these models and OVRO SZE determinations will be presented in a second paper.Comment: 51 pages, 6 figures included in text. Added comparison of different cosmologies; accepted for publication in Ap

A Tree-Ring Record of Historical Fire Activity In a Piedmont Longleaf Pine (\u3ci\u3ePinus palustris\u3c/i\u3e Mill.) Woodland In North Carolina, USA

CO2 capture from industrial point source waste streams represents an important need for achieving the global goal of carbon-neutrality. Compared with conventional liquid sorbents, solid sorbents can exhibit several distinct advantages, including enhanced lifetime and reduced energy consumption for sorbent regeneration. Considering that reducing CO2 emission is a great challenge, reaching approximately 37 billion metric tons just in 2021, ideal sorbent solutions should not only exhibit a high capture performance but also enable large scale manufacturing using low-cost precursors and simple processes. In this work, we demonstrate the use of a commodity polymer, polystyrene-block-polyisoprene-block-polystyrene (SIS), as the starting material for preparing hierarchically porous, sulfur-doped carbons for CO2 capture. Particularly, the sulfonation-crosslinking reaction enables the formation of macropores in the polymer framework due to the release of gaseous byproducts. After carbonization and activation, the highly porous structure of SIS-derived carbons is successfully retained, while their surface area can reach up to 905 m2 g−1. These porous carbon sorbents exhibit excellent CO2 uptake performance, reaching sorption capacities of 3.8 mmol g−1 at 25 °C and 6.0 mmol g−1 at 0 °C, as well as a high selectivity up to 43 : 1 against N2 gas under ambient conditions. Overall, our work provides an industrially viable method for “template-free” fabrication of porous carbons from commodity polyolefin-based materials, which can be employed for reducing CO2 emission from industrial plants/sectors

Quantifying structural damage from self-irradiation in a plutonium superconductor

The 18.5 K superconductor PuCoGa5 has many unusual properties, including those due to damage induced by self-irradiation. The superconducting transition temperature decreases sharply with time, suggesting a radiation-induced Frenkel defect concentration much larger than predicted by current radiation damage theories. Extended x-ray absorption fine-structure measurements demonstrate that while the local crystal structure in fresh material is well ordered, aged material is disordered much more strongly than expected from simple defects, consistent with strong disorder throughout the damage cascade region. These data highlight the potential impact of local lattice distortions relative to defects on the properties of irradiated materials and underscore the need for more atomic-resolution structural comparisons between radiation damage experiments and theory.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, to be published in PR

Shear strength properties of wet granular materials

We investigate shear strength properties of wet granular materials in the pendular state (i.e. the state where the liquid phase is discontinuous) as a function of water content. Sand and glass beads were wetted and tested in a direct shear cell and under various confining pressures. In parallel, we carried out three-dimensional molecular dynamics simulations by using an explicit equation expressing capillary force as a function of interparticle distance, water bridge volume and surface tension. We show that, due to the peculiar features of capillary interactions, the major influence of water content over the shear strength stems from the distribution of liquid bonds. This property results in shear strength saturation as a function of water content. We arrive at the same conclusion by a microscopic analysis of the shear strength. We propose a model that accounts for the capillary force, the granular texture and particle size polydispersity. We find fairly good agreement of the theoretical estimate of the shear strength with both experimental data and simulations. From numerical data, we analyze the connectivity and anisotropy of different classes of liquid bonds according to the sign and level of the normal force as well as the bond direction. We find that weak compressive bonds are almost isotropically distributed whereas strong compressive and tensile bonds have a pronounced anisotropy. The probability distribution function of normal forces is exponentially decreasing for strong compressive bonds, a decreasing power-law function over nearly one decade for weak compressive bonds and an increasing linear function in the range of tensile bonds. These features suggest that different bond classes do not play the same role with respect to the shear strength.Comment: 12 page