We describe the dimensions along which bank technologies differ from fintech competitors and construct a novel measure of a bank’s technology based upon its overlap with fintech firms in terms of granular product installation data. A one standard deviation increase in our financial technology measure is associated with an 8.3 percentage point increase in Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans in 2020Q2. We show that smaller banks benefited more from marginal technology gains, that technology facilitated out-of-area lending, and that technology complemented small banks’ branch-based in-area lending. In a difference-in-differences analysis, we show an outsized increase in small business lending growth in 2020 for high tech small banks relative to their peers.

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated the US Gulf Coast in 2005. We use job-level data to compare the evolution of earnings for affected workers in four states with workers from matched control counties. We attribute short-term earnings losses to job separations and long-term gains to wage growth in the affected areas. Wages rose due to reduced labor supply and increased labor demand in the affected labor markets. Damage to a worker’s residence or workplace accentuated short-term earnings losses. Effects varied by prestorm industry, with larger gains for workers in sectors related to rebuilding.

This paper presents a new approach to the measurement of the effects of spatial mismatch that takes advantage of matched employeremployee administrative data integrated with a person-specific job accessibility measure, as well as demographic and neighborhood characteristics. We focus on a group of job searchers for plausibly exogenous reasons: lower-income workers with strong labor force attachment separated during a mass layoff. Our results support the spatial mismatch hypothesis. We find that better job accessibility significantly decreases the duration of joblessness among lower-income displaced workers, especially for blacks, women, and older workers.