Regulatory Risk Perception and Small Business Lending
研究发现小企业管理局员工对风险的感知存在非理性偏差：他们过去工作地点的贷款违约率越高，在新地点发放的贷款和创造的就业就越少，且这种效应与当地经济状况无关。
We uncover a significant friction in small business lending: perception of risk by Small Business Administration (SBA) employees. Using novel data on SBA employees transferring across offices, we find that more current defaults on SBA loans in their previous location reduce SBA loans and job creation in their current location. The effect is independent of local economic conditions and the informational content of the nonlocal defaults, suggesting that SBA employees update their risk assessment irrationally. Our results are the first to document that regulators’ misperception of economic conditions affects the ability of small businesses to obtain access to finance. This paper was accepted by Camelia Kuhnen, finance. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.03040 .