Noah Berger
Research Mentor(s): Patrick Meehan
Mentor Department:
Authors:
Session: Session 5 (2:00pm – 2:50pm)
Presentation Type: Poster 93
Abstract
In May 2020, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, America had its largest recession since World War II, affecting small businesses as well as minority and poor communities in particular: 29.7% of small businesses closed from January 2020 to the end of December 2020 and there was a 41.0% decline in black-owned businesses, according to Bloomberg. The economy as a whole relies heavily on small businesses and minority business ownership is crucial for building toward socio-economic equality. This project will involve analyzing HMDA data from 2019 to 2023 to compare mortgage lending to minority and white business owners in multiple cities, starting with Boston. The data has already been downloaded and cleaned using Stata, the statistical software employed for the analysis. By filtering out non-business mortgages, using the Investment and non owner-occupant variables, the analysis will aim to calculate aggregate measures like approval rates, loan amounts, and interest rates while controlling for confounding variables. Using these results we can make conclusions about how the pandemic has affected lending to small businesses, especially those owned by minorities. This could have implications in lender bias as well as how small-business owners have reacted to COVID
