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Discussion Paper
What Drove Racial Disparities in the Paycheck Protection Program?
Numerous studies of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which provided loans to small businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic, have documented racial disparities in the program. Because publicly available PPP data only include information on approved loans, prior work has largely been unable to assess whether these disparities were driven by borrower application behavior or by lender approval decisions. In this post, which is based on a related Staff Report and NBER working paper, we use the Federal Reserve’s 2020 Small Business Credit Survey to examine PPP application behavior and ...
Community Banking Conference Highlights PPP Research
The Paycheck Protection Program was the subject of several papers at this year’s community banking conference.
Journal Article
Small Business Lending and the Paycheck Protection Program
The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and the PPP Liquidity Facility were launched early in the pandemic to help many small businesses survive. These programs encouraged banks to lend more extensively to small businesses over the first half of 2020. Since then, however, banks have reduced their exposure to these loans, leaving no significant changes in small business lending associated with participation in these programs over the three-year period from 2020 through 2022. This raises some doubt that emergency lending programs encourage long-term relationships that outlast the programs.
Journal Article
Fed’s PPP Liquidity Facility Provides CDFIs Balance Sheet Relief
Learn how the Federal Reserve’s Paycheck Protection Program Liquidity Facility has aided community development financial institutions in supporting small businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Working Paper
Bank Relationships and the Geography of PPP Lending
I study how bank relationships affected the timing and geographic distribution of Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) lending. Half of banks' PPP loans went to borrowers within 2 miles of a branch, mostly driven by relationship lending. Firms near less active lenders shifted to fintechs and other distant lenders, resulting in delays receiving credit but only slightly lower loan volumes. I estimate a structural model to fit the observed relationship between branch distance, bank PPP activity, and origination timing. I find that banks served relationship borrowers 5 to 9 days before other ...
Report
Applications or Approvals: What Drives Racial Disparities in the Paycheck Protection Program?
We use the 2020 Small Business Credit Survey to study the sources of racial disparities in use of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). Black-owned firms are 8.9 percentage points less likely than observably similar white-owned firms to receive PPP loans. About 55% of this take-up disparity is attributable to a disparity in application propensity, while the remainder is attributable to a disparity in approval rates. The finding in prior research that Black-owned PPP recipients are less likely than whiteowned recipients to borrow from banks and more likely to borrow from fintech lenders is ...