Robert B. Avery

The role of personal wealth in small business finance

Abstract This paper provides new empirical evidence on the relationship between personal commitments and the allocation of small business credit. The data suggest that personal commitments are important for firms seeking certain types of loans. Guarantees are more prevalent than collateral and organization type (corporate versus noncorporate status) appears to be particularly important in determining commitment use. No systematic relationship is observed between commitment use and owner wealth. Personal commitments appear to be substitutes for business collateral, at least for lines of credit, while personal collateral and personal guarantees do not seem to substitute for each other. Personal commitments have generally become more important to small business lending since the late 1980s.

Risk-based capital and deposit insurance reform

Risk-based capital (RBC) is an important component of deposit insurance reform. This paper provides an empirical analysis of the new 1992 RBC bank standards, applying them to data on virtually all U.S. banks from 1982 to 1989. The data reveal strong associations between several measures of future bank performance (including bankruptcy) and the RBC relative risk weights. These associations suggest that the weights constitute a significant improvement over the old capital standards, although there are several instances in which the weights for specific categories appear to be out of line with the performance results. Tests of the informational value of passing or failing the new and old capital standards show that both have independent information, but that the new RBC standards better predict future bank performance problems. The data also indicate that, in contrast to the old standards, the RBC capital burden falls much more heavily on large banks. As a result, banks representing more than one-fourth of all bank assets would have failed the new RBC standards as of 1989. The new standards are also more stringent overall. More banks would have failed the new standards than the old ones, with larger average capital deficiencies.

Consolidation and bank branching patterns

Abstract This paper examines the association between consolidation and changes in levels of bank branching as measured by changes in the number of bank branches per capita. Using a specially-constructed data set, we address this issue as well as how this relationship varies with the type of consolidation and initial regulatory, competitive, and market conditions. We find that merges where merging institutions have branch networks which overlap within a ZIP code (within-ZIP merger) are strongly associated with a reduction in offices per capita in that ZIP code. This result is robust across time and holds in both rural and urban areas. The findings also suggest that, contrary to popularly held views, consolidation is not unambiguously negatively associated with changes in the number of banking offices per capita. Neither within-market-but-not-within-ZIP mergers nor out-of-market mergers consistently show such a relationship. We also find that the relationships between within-ZIP and within-market-but-not-within-ZIP mergers and changes in the number of bank offices per capita are more negative in low-income neighborhoods than in other neighborhoods. However, because most states now have unrestricted branching and because savings associations are less prevalent and financially healthier than in the past, these findings may not be indicative of future branching patterns.

Credit Scoring: Statistical Issues and Evidence from Credit-Bureau Files

Although credit scoring offers benefits to lenders and borrowers, its use raises important statistical issues that may affect the ability of scoring systems to accurately quantify an individuals credit risk. The evidence from a national sample of credit-bureau records suggests that concerns about omitted-variable bias may be justified, as local economic factors show significant correlations with credit scores. Copyright American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association.

Bank Consolidation and the Provision of Banking Services: The Case of Small Commercial Loans

This paper examines how bank small business lending in local markets was related to bank merger activity during the mid-1990s. The authors use deposit data reported at the branch level to impute the distribution of bank small business loans across urban and rural markets; they then study the link between various types of merger activity and the growth of small business lending in the local market. Multivariate tests indicate that bank consolidation is more broadly linked to lower estimated loan growth in rural markets than in urban ones. However, there is also evidence of lower small business loan growth in concentrated urban markets that are experiencing within-market merger activity. And, consistent with bank-level research, bank consolidation mainly involving mergers between smaller banks tends to be associated with greater small business credit availability in local banking markets. Finally, the authors validate their empirical strategy by comparing their geographic loan estimates to geographic loan originations reported since 1996 by larger institutions under the auspices of the Community Reinvestment Act.

Using HMDA Data as a Regulatory Screen for Fair Lending Compliance

This paper describes and evaluates the Federal Reserve Systems recently developed program designed to use HMDA data as a screening device for fair lending enforcement. The program is designed to identify institutions showing potentially discriminatory patterns in their treatment of minority mortgage applicants vis-a`-vis nonminority applicants. The program also selects specific loan files to pull for additional information in cases where a more comprehensive evaluation might be appropriate. This paper discusses the motivation behind the adoption of the program and its innovative “matched-pair” method and assesses its value and potential shortcomings.

The Subprime Crisis: Is Government Housing Policy to Blame?

Some have suggested that housing policy, embodied by the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) and affordable housing goals of the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs), caused the subprime crisis. We examine if these programs led to worse mortgage outcomes using two approaches. The first examines whether more activity by CRA-covered lenders, or more loan sales to the GSEs, was associated with worse outcomes. The second uses regression discontinuity to determine if outcomes were worse at the geographic thresholds used by each program. Our results suggest that neither program played a significant role in the subprime crisis.

Assessing the Necessity and Efficiency of the Community Reinvestment Act

Abstract A number of researchers have recently questioned whether the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) is still needed. In addition, economic analysis has explored the efficiency of many regulations, but not the CRA. This article seeks to address both issues to shed light on the necessity and efficiency of the CRA. On the basis of data from a survey on the performance and profitability of CRA‐related lending activities, we reach three main conclusions. First, consistent with the view that the CRA is needed, we find evidence that the majority of surveyed institutions engaged in some lending activities that they would not otherwise have done in the absence of the law. Second, in terms of efficiency, the results are mixed: The vast majority of institutions increased credit flows profitably, but a significant minority incurred costs, albeit small ones. Third, quantitative evidence suggests that marginal CRA‐related lending tended to be small.

Posted Rates and Mortgage Lending Activity

In many metropolitan areas (MSAs) newspapers post mortgage terms for lenders in a manner designed to permit an easy comparison of discount points and note rates. Using these advertised rates for 73 lenders in three MSAs we examine 1) how applicants respond to short-run changes in relative rates, and 2) the relationship between the services provided and quality of applications received by lenders and their long-term market positions. We find that applicant flows increase when lenders lower their rates. We also find that persistent cross-lender differences in rates are associated with differences in product quality reflected in processing times, loan sales, and FHA/VA lending; and that high-risk borrowers tend to apply to lenders posting above-average rates.