Consolidation in the U.S. banking industry has led to larger banks. I find that low-income households face reduced access to credit when local banks are large. This result appears to stem from large banks’ comparative disadvantage using soft information, which is particularly important for lending to low-income households. In contrast, the size of local banks has little or no effect on high-income households. Consistent with low-income parents’ credit constraints limiting investment in their children’s human capital, areas with larger banks exhibit a greater sensitivity of educational attainment to parental income, and less intergenerational economic mobility.

Professional sports teams commonly reevaluate their location decisions based on the prospect of building new, more attractive, stadiums. Even though a large economic literature warns about the modest (and possibly negative) effects on the local economy of hosting a professional sports team, the economic effects of professional teams and stadiums remain blurry for the general public, and cities in the United States continue to compete to lure teams with generous public subsidies. This article integrates several contributions of the literature into one cohesive and simple framework based on cost–benefit analysis, and provides estimations of the average local economic effects of teams in the four biggest professional leagues in the United States. If professional sports games do not attract visitors from other cities, or if players and owners do not spend a significant share of their income in the area, hosting a team can negatively affect the local economy.

Banks’ information technology (IT) capabilities affect their ability to serve customers during the COVID-19 pandemic, which generates an unexpected and unprecedented shock that shifts banking services from in-person to digital. Amid mobility restrictions, banks with better IT experience larger reductions in physical branch visits and larger increases in website traffic, implying a larger shift to digital banking. Stronger IT banks are able to originate more Paycheck Protection Program loans to small business borrowers, especially in areas with more severe COVID-19 outbreaks, higher internet use, and higher bank competition. Those banks also attract more deposit flows and receive better mobile customer reviews during the pandemic.

Due to the government-driven mergers of large banks, many competing firms in Japan ended up borrowing from a common lender. Using firm-level data, we find that the capital investments of competing firms that share a common lender decrease by 15% of the mean. When a common lender can exercise its voice through its former employees serving as firms’ executive directors, investments fall significantly further. Competing firms that share a common lender increase markups and profitability ratios, suggesting that the lender induces strategic coordination among its borrowers to reduce their competitive pressures. Firms use saved resources from weaker competition for cash cushions.

This article develops a liberal theory of the virtues in business. I first articulate two key liberal values embodied within market society: self-authorship and mutual benefit. Self-authorship is a mode of autonomy given expression through the effective exercise of economic liberties. Mutual benefit involves the intentional pursuit of the well-being of one’s transaction partners within economic exchange. These values are uniquely realized, I argue, within business, conceptualized as a distinct, firm-level, social practice. More specifically, individuals realize self-authorship by purposively integrating cospecialized resources, forms of knowledge, and business functions to facilitate mutually beneficial transactions. Through their commitment to mutual benefit, businesspersons establish ongoing, cooperative relationships with customers, members of other firms, and various stakeholders more generally. These relationships are constitutive of a distinct liberal notion of the common good. The practice of business and the common good in a market society are sustained by a range of individual-level virtues. I recount these virtues and, before concluding, discuss several other theoretical implications of this account.