Collaborative Research: Direct Lending in the U.S. Middle Market

2008年金融危机后，美国银行业监管收紧，导致替代性非银行贷款机构，特别是商业发展公司（BDC）激增。这一部门在过去二十年中迅速扩大。该项目将建立一个广泛的数据库，并对商业发展中心部门进行首次系统分析。该项目将重点关注这些新的贷款机构，并提供对美国经济中一个重要但研究不足的部分的见解-中间市场，该市场占私营部门就业的三分之一。具体而言，该项目将调查非银行贷款对中间市场企业和经济增长的影响。总体而言，本研究对金融中介在经济中的作用具有重要的政策意义。通过构建新的数据库，本研究将推进非银行贷款的知识体系。首先，该项目将调查BDC部门增长的原因，并分析它们在为中间市场公司融资方面的作用。数据集的粒度还将允许描述目标借款人和提供的贷款解决方案。第二，该项目将利用BDC投资组合公司的位置信息来估计这些直接贷款人对中等市场公司以及更广泛地对当地经济增长的真实的影响。第三，该项目将调查进入资本市场的机会如何影响直接贷款人的投资活动。最后，由于BDC向企业提供资金而不依赖于存款保险，他们提出了一种新的贷款模式，可能会改善目前以存款为基础的银行体系。为了了解这种替代贷款机制的影响，该项目将开发一个量化框架，对过渡到新贷款环境的福利进行分析。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

AbstractThe tightening of regulation in the U.S. banking sector following the Financial Crisis of 2008 contributed to a surge of alternative nonbank lenders and, in particular, business development companies (BDCs). This sector has expanded rapidly over the last two decades. This project will construct an extensive database and conduct the first systematic analysis of the BDC sector. The project will focus on these new lenders and provide insights into an important yet understudied segment of the U.S. economy - the middle market, which accounts for a third of private-sector employment. Specifically, the project will investigate the impact of nonbank lending on middle-market firms and economic growth. Overall, the project will have important policy implications for the role of financial intermediation in the economy.By constructing a novel database, this project will advance the body of knowledge on nonbank lending. First, the project will investigate the causes of the BDC sector growth and analyze their role in financing middle-market firms. The granularity of the dataset will additionally allow to characterize the borrowers targeted and lending solutions offered. Second, the project will use the location information of BDC portfolio companies to estimate the real effects of these direct lenders on middle-market firms and, more broadly, on local economic growth. Third, the project will investigate how access to capital markets affects investment activities of direct lenders. Finally, since BDCs provide funding to firms without relying on deposit insurance, they put forward a new lending model that may offer an improvement to the current deposit-based banking system. To understand the effects of this alternative lending mechanism, the project will develop a quantitative framework to conduct a welfare analysis of transitioning to a new lending environment.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.