題目：Can FinTech reduce disparities in access to finance? Evidence from the Paycheck Protection Program（JFE2022）

摘要：New technology promises to expand the supply of financial services to small businesses poorly served by banks. Does it succeed? We study the response of FinTech to financial services demand created by the introduction of the Paycheck Protection Program. FinTech is disproportionately used in ZIP codes with fewer bank branches, lower incomes, and more minority households, and in industries with fewer banking relationships. It is also greater in counties where the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic were more severe. Substitution between FinTech and banks is economically small, implying that FinTech mostly expands, rather than redistributes, the supply of financial services.

• What effect did allowing FinTechs to participate have on the provision?of financial services and on financial inclusion for small businesses? Our paper answers this important question

• Our first question is whether FinTechs provided more access to PPP loans in areas where these loans were needed more....Second, we study whether FinTech lenders provided PPP loans to businesses with limited previous access to the banking system relative to traditional banks....Third, we ask whether FinTech lenders “expand the pie”of financial services or merely redistribute it.

• Our paper is the first one to focus on how FinTech lenders affected financial access to PPP loans by small businesses in areas traditionally underserved by banks and for borrowers with few connections to banks. Our findings are also related to research on the differences between FinTech lenders and banks, and more broadly, on how nonbank lenders respond to shocks.

• Our goal is to compare how FinTechs and traditional banks provide PPP loans to borrowers with weak connections to the banking system and in areas with few bank branches.