In September 2008, the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs), Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, were placed into conservatorship. The GSEs' equity prices dropped considerably in response, and, as a result, many banks that held sizable amounts of the preferred stock of the two GSEs recognized substantial losses. Fifteen failures and two mergers resulted. We treat these losses as plausibly exogenous, unanticipated, supply-side shocks to bank lending, as they are likely unrelated to demand-side factors that could affect lending, and because GSE investments were considered to be safe by banks, regulators, and rating agencies. As a result, this event allows us to examine the relationship between community bank condition and lending during the global financial crisis. We find that, following the shock, loan growth at exposed banks was about 2 percentage points lower than other banks.

We formulate and test hypotheses about the role of bank type – small versus large, single-market versus multimarket, and local versus nonlocal banks – in banking relationships. The conventional paradigm suggests that “community banks” – small, single-market, local institutions – are better able to form strong relationships with informationally opaque small businesses, while “megabanks” – large, multimarket, nonlocal institutions – tend to serve more transparent firms. Using the 2003 Survey of Small Business Finance (SSBF), we conduct two sets of tests. First, we test for the type of bank serving as the “main” relationship bank for small businesses with different firm and owner characteristics. Second, we test for the strength of these main relationships by examining the probability of an exclusive relationship and main bank relationship length as functions of main bank type and financial fragility, as well as firm and owner characteristics. The results are often not consistent with the conventional paradigm, perhaps because of changes in lending technologies and deregulation of the banking industry.

ABSTRACT While relaxation of geographical restrictions on bank expansion permitted banking organizations to expand across state lines, it allowed states to erect barriers to branch expansion. These differences in states' branching restrictions affect credit supply. In states more open to branching, small firms borrow at interest rates 80 to 100 basis points lower than firms operating in less open states. Firms in open states also are more likely to borrow from banks. Despite this evidence that interstate branch openness expands credit supply, we find no effect of variation in state restrictions on branching on the amount that small firms borrow.