The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expresse...

This study is on the determinants of credit access by small scale farmers in Dekina Local Government Area of Kogi State, Nigeria. The specific objectives are to; identify the major source of credit among the small scale farmers; estimate the determinants of farmers’ access to formal credit; compare the farm income of farmers who have access to formal credit and those who have not and identify c...

this study was designed to investigate the demand for institutional credit among small scale farmers in imo state. a sample of 40 livestock and 50 food crop farmers were selected respectively using multistage random sampling technique. data were collected with a well structured questionnaire administered to a total of 90 randomly selected farmers. data collected were analyzed using descriptive ...

Do commercial banks invest less in information gathering activity when they compete more aggressively with each other? Does intensifying competitive pressure in bank loan markets affect the quality of informational ties that bind borrowers and lending banks? Using survey data from German manufacturing firms, we are able to directly measure information flows from loan applicants to banks. We fin...

Debtor-friendly laws can encourage innovation by reducing the cost of failure for innovators, but can also harm innovation if they tighten the availability of credit to innovators. We use state and year variation in U.S. personal bankruptcy laws, which affect the capital constraints of individual innovators and small firms, to investigate the effects of debtor protection on innovation. We find ...

We study the effects of physical distance on the acquisition and use of private information in informationally opaque credit markets. Using a unique data set of all loan applications by small firms to a large bank, we show that borrower proximity facilitates the collection of soft information, leading to a trade-off in the availability and pricing of credit, which is more readily accessible to ...

Investigators exammning problems with credit availability during the most recent recession have been unable to provide definitive evidence that the decline in bank loans was, at least in part, a supply phenomenon. Furthermore, they have not focused on the subset of loans made to borrowers most likely to be dependent on bank financing. This study overcomes these flaws. By examining formal regula...

Much has been written on the determinants of input and technology adoption in agriculture, with issues such as input availability, knowledge and education, risk preferences, profitability, and credit constraints receiving much attention. This paper focuses on a factor that has been less well documented: the differential ability of households to take on risky production technologies for fear of ...

We find that competition from payday lenders leads depository institutions to raise overdraft fees and reduce the availability of “free” checking accounts. We attribute this rise in prices partly to adverse selection created by banks’ practice of charging a flat fee regardless of the overdraft amount―pricing that favors depositors prone to large overdrafts. Payday credit is priced per dollar bo...

We test the hypothesis whether gradual privatization with a soft credit constraint to enterprises with state ownership (ESOs) implies slow restructuring. The transition economics literature does not study restructuring and financial constraints to investment jointly. We provide such an analysis using a panel of Latvian firms in the years 1993-1997. We find that firms have been downsizing their ...