Download or read book Essays on the Monetary Transmission Mechanism, Changes in the United States Banking System and Small Business Lending written by David Vera and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: My first essay is a survey of the literature on the bank-lending channel of monetary policy, banking deregulation in the U.S. and small business lending. This literature provides a framework for exploring questions of how recent changes in banking deregulation may have affected the monetary transmission mechanism and small business lending. In my second essay, I provide evidence that the monetary transmission mechanism in the U.S. has changed. In particular, using aggregate data I show that monetary policy shocks no longer have the significant effects on bank loans that were previously demonstrated in the literature. The smaller response of bank loans coincides with a period of deregulation in the banking system that triggered banking consolidation. Using bank-level data, I tie the changes in the monetary transmission mechanism to changes in the response of bank loans resulting from mergers. Consistent with earlier research that linked monetary policy effects to banks' balance sheet characteristics, I show that the growth of loans of banks that have merged is less sensitive to monetary policy shocks than that of banks not taking part in mergers. In my third essay I explore the link between changes in the banking system and small business lending. Research on banking indicates that small banks appear to be the main providers of credit to small businesses. Recent changes in banking legislation that have triggered consolidation have raised concerns over the availability of credit to small businesses. In this paper I provide evidence that even though recent changes in banking legislation have decreased the number of small banks, they have not had an effect on total small business lending. I also provide evidence that small banks may be participating less in small business lending. These results have implications for both the smaller output volatility recently documented in the literature as well as for a diminished bank-lending channel of the monetary transmission mechanism.