Has International Financial Integration Increased?

This paper compares the behavior of real interest rate differentials across the major countries under the Bretton Woods regime and the regime of floating exchanges that replaced it. The primary object is to investigate both the extent of market integration and its changes over time. For all fifteen possible country pairs real interest differential are mean reverting, and in two-thirds of these cases indistinguishable from zero statistically. For all country pairs on average and for most such pairs individually, moreover, the estimated differentials are not appreciably different in absolute values than the differentials that we estimate for various money-market rates within the United States. Additional evidence points to a narrowing of differentials under floating rates over time and an increase in speeds of convergence.Financial integration, interest-rate equalization, real interest rates.

Relationship Lending and Denovo Banks: An examination of Bank Lending to Small Farm Borrowers

In this paper we examine the lending by small banks to small farms. We find that relationships, as measured by the length of tenure of farm operators, are positively related to bank lending. We also find that denovo banks have a positive tendency to lend to small farms, similar to the tendency of denovo banks to lend to small businesses generally. When existing relationships between borrowers and incumbent lenders are stronger, however, denovo banks have greater difficulties in lending to small farms. Finally, we find that, even within the category of small banks, lending to small farms (as a percentage of a bank's assets) tends to decrease as the bank increases in size. We believe that small farms are a category of small enterprises that have been underresearched in the lending literature and that further study of these relationships would yield new and interesting results

The Effects of Dynamic Changes in Bank Competition on the Supply of Small Business Credit

We study the effects of structural changes in banking markets on the supply of credit to small businesses. Specifically, we examine whether bank mergers and acquisitions (M&As) and entry have "external" effects on small business loans by other banks in the same local markets. The results suggest modest positive external effects from these dynamic changes in competition, except that large banks may reduce small business lending in reaction to entry. We confirm bank size and age as important determinants of this lending, and show that the measured age effect does not appear to be driven by local market M&A activity

The Dymanics of Market Entry: The Effects of Mergers and Acquisitions on De Novo Entry and Small Business Lending in the Banking Industry,

We study the dynamics of market entry following mergers and acquisitions (M&As), and the behavior of recent entrants in supplying output that might be withdrawn by the consolidating firms. The data, drawn from the banking industry, suggests that M&As are associated with subsequent increases in the probability of entry. The estimates suggest that M&As explain more than 20% of entry in metropolitan markets, and more than 10% of entry in rural markets. Additional results suggest that bank age has a strong negative effect on the small business lending of small banks, but that M&As have little influence on this lending

The Effects of Competition from Large, Multimarket Firms on the Performance of Small, Single-Market Firms: Evidence from the Banking Industry

We offer and test two competing hypotheses for the consolidation trend in banking using U.S. banking industry data over the period 1982-2000. Under the efficiency hypothesis, technological progress improved the performance of large, multimarket firms relative to small, single-market firms, whereas under the hubris hypothesis, consolidation was largely driven by corporate hubris. Our results are consistent with an empirical dominance of the efficiency hypothesis over the hubris hypothesis on net, technological progress allowed large, multimarket banks to compete more effectively against small, single-market banks in the 1990s than in the 1980s. We also isolate the extent to which technological progress occurred through scale versus geographic effects and how they affected the performance of small, single-market banks through revenues versus costs. The results may shed light as well on some of the research and policy issues related to community banking, and on the question of how community banks should be defined

De Novo Banks and Lending to Small Businesses: An Empirical Analysis

Recent widespread consolidation in the banking industry has elicited concern that lending to small businesses will be reduced by the banking industry. The consolidation, though, has stimulated an upsurge in new bank charters. This study compares the lending by de novo banks to small businesses with the lending by similarly sized incumbent banks for years 1987-1994. We find that the portfolios of de novo banks consistently contain a substantially higher percentage of small business loans than do the portfolios of similar incumbents. These results indicate that de novo banks can be part of the solution to the problems that consolidation may create

Youth, Adolescence, and Maturity of Banks: Credit Availability to Small Business in an Era of Banking Consolidation

This paper address the relationship between the aging process at new and relatively young banks and the tendency of banks to make loans to small businesses. Defining small business loans as C&I loans that are under $1 million in size, we analyze a sample of banks that had assets of less than %500 million in assets for the years 1993-1996 and that were 25 years of age or younger

Youth, Adolescence, and Maturity of Banks: Credit Availability to Small Business in an Era of Banking Consolidation

This paper address the relationship between the aging process at new and relatively young banks and the tendency of banks to make loans to small businesses. Defining small business loans as C&I loans that are under $1 million in size, we analyze a sample of banks that had assets of less than %500 million in assets for the years 1993-1996 and that were 25 years of age or younger

Relationship Lending and Denovo Banks: An examination of Bank Lending to Small Farm Borrowers

In this paper we examine the lending by small banks to small farms. We find that relationships, as measured by the length of tenure of farm operators, are positively related to bank lending. We also find that denovo banks have a positive tendency to lend to small farms, similar to the tendency of denovo banks to lend to small businesses generally. When existing relationships between borrowers and incumbent lenders are stronger, however, denovo banks have greater difficulties in lending to small farms. Finally, we find that, even within the category of small banks, lending to small farms (as a percentage of a bank's assets) tends to decrease as the bank increases in size. We believe that small farms are a category of small enterprises that have been underresearched in the lending literature and that further study of these relationships would yield new and interesting results

Cookie-Cutter versus Character: The Micro Structure of Small Business Lending by Large and Small Banks

The recent consolidation in the banking system has focused attention on the difference in lending between large and small banks, since large banks lend proportionally less to small business. We use a newly available survey of small business finances conducted by the Federal Reserve System to analyze the micro-level differences between large banks and small banks in the loan approval process. We find that large banks (over $1 billion in assets) appear to employ standard criteria obtained from financial statements in the loan decision process, while small banks (less than$1 billion in assets) deviate from these criteria more and appear to rely on their impression of the character of the borrower to a larger extent. These "cookie-cutter" and "character" approaches are consistent with the incentives and environments facing large and small banks