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Showing results 1 to 9 of approximately 9.
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Working Paper
Faster payments in the United States: how can private sector systems achieve public policy goals?
Consumers and businesses are increasingly expecting faster payments. While many countries have already developed or are in process of developing faster payments, the availability of these payments is fragmented in the United States. The recently released paper by the Federal Reserve encourages private sector participants to provide faster payment services. However, private-sector faster payments systems will face significant challenges in achieving public policy goals of ubiquity, safety, and efficiency unless system governance represents broad public interests. One way to better align ...
Journal Article
The Impact of the Pandemic on US Businesses: New Results from the Annual Business Survey
Working with Federal Reserve staff, the US Census Bureau added to the 2021 Annual Business Survey (ABS) a special module of questions focused on the pandemic and small business finances. Questions ranged from the impact of the pandemic on business sales, to government assistance requested/received, and to the financial health of the firm. In this article, we report the results of these questions—and how they differ by race and ethnicity. The survey finds that more than 60 percent of business experienced declines in sales. Fully one-third experienced significant declines. More than 70 ...
Working Paper
Should Platforms be Allowed to Charge Ad Valorem Fees?
Many platforms that facilitate transactions between buyers and sellers charge ad valorem fees in which fees depend on the transaction price set by sellers. Given these platforms do not incur significant costs that vary with transaction prices, their use of ad valorem fees has raised controversies about the efficiency of this practice. In this paper, using a model that connects platforms' use of ad valorem fees to third-degree price discrimination, we evaluate the welfare consequences of banning such fees. We find the use of ad valorem fees generally increases welfare, including for calibrated ...
Discussion Paper
The Impact of the Pandemic on US Businesses: New Results from the Annual Business Survey
Working with Federal Reserve staff, the US Census Bureau added to the 2021 Annual Business Survey (ABS) a special module of questions focused on the pandemic and small business finances. Questions ranged from the impact of the pandemic on business sales, to government assistance requested/received, and to the financial health of the firm. In this article, we report the results of these questions—and how they differ by race and ethnicity. The survey finds that more than 60 percent of business experienced declines in sales. Fully one-third experienced significant declines. More than 70 ...
Working Paper
Market Concentration in Fintech
This paper discusses concentration in consumer credit markets with a focus on fintech lenders and residential mortgages. We present evidence that shows that concentration among fintech lenders is significantly higher than that for bank lenders and other nonbank lenders. The data also show that the overall concentration in mortgage lending has declined between 2011 and 2019, driven mostly by a reduction in concentration among bank lenders. We present a simple model to show that changes in lender financial technology (interpreted as improvements in quality of loan services) explain more than ...
Report
Entry restrictions, industry evolution, and dynamic efficiency: evidence from commercial banking
This paper shows that bank performance improves significantly after restrictions on bank expansion are lifted. We find that operating costs and loan losses decrease sharply after states permit statewide branching and, to a lesser extent, after states allow interstate banking. The improvements following branching deregulation appear to occur because better banks grow at the expense of their less-efficient rivals. By retarding the "natural" evolution of the industry, branching restrictions reduce the performance of the average banking asset. We also find that most of the reduction in banks' ...
Working Paper
Basic Facts on the Coverage of the Paycheck Protection Program
This paper applies loan-level information from Paycheck Protection Program loans to analyze the coverage of this extraordinary lending program. We show that loans went to a large share of small businesses across most industries in the US, especially to industries that were most negatively impacted by COVID-19 stay-at-home orders. We geocode the loans and then identify that 2021 loans were more concentrated in low- and moderate-income communities, along with census tracts where minority residents are a majority of the population. The growth of nonemployer loans and fintech lending in the ...
Working Paper
Hidden Baggage : Behavioral Responses to Changes in Airline Ticket Tax Disclosure
We examine the impact on air travelers of an enforcement action issued by the U.S. Department of Transportation in January 2012 that required U.S. air carriers and online travel agents to incorporate all mandatory taxes and fees into their advertised fares. Exploiting cross-itinerary ticket tax variation within international city market pairs, we provide evidence that the more prominent display of tax-inclusive prices is associated with a significant reduction in tax incidence on consumers and a decline in passenger volume along more heavily-taxed itineraries. Ticket revenues are ...
Working Paper
Credit Availability for Minority Business Owners in an Evolving Credit Environment: Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic
We apply data from the Federal Reserve’s Small Business Credit Survey from 2016 to 2020 to estimate disparities in access to small business financing through loan denials and discouragement. We find that substantial credit disparities continue to exist despite the growth of fintech lenders, which prior research shows have expanded the set of small businesses receiving credit. Because the pandemic period brought many direct changes to the business and lending environment, we separately analyze the change to lending in 2020. PPP loans represented an unprecedented support for small businesses, ...