We assess the role of race in loans made through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). The PPP program, created by the U.S. government as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic, provides loans to small businesses so they can keep employees on their payroll. We argue that the historical record and PPP program design choices made it likely that many Black-owned businesses received smaller PPP loans than White-owned businesses. Using newly released data on the PPP program, we find that Black-owned businesses received loans that were approximately 50% lower than observationally similar White-owned businesses. The effect is marginally smaller in areas with more bank competition and disappeared over time as changes to the PPP program were implemented allowing for entry by fintechs and other non-traditional lenders.

We find that Black-owned businesses received loans through the Paycheck Protection Program that were approximately 50 percent lower than White-owned businesses with similar characteristics. However, this difference in loan size shrank over time as more non-bank lenders such as fintechs were allowed to participate in the program and began approving PPP loans. Loan size differences were also slightly smaller in zip codes containing a larger number of bank branches. These results are consistent with prior research which shows lending discrimination by commercial banks against Black borrowers. It is also consistent with studies showing that greater access to and competition among banks and other lenders can reduce discrimination. In light of these results we recommend that policy makers account for existing racial inequalities within banking or other systems in their program design to produce more equitable outcomes.

我们评估了种族在通过薪资保护计划（PPP）发放的贷款中的作用。美国政府为应对 Covid-19 大流行而创建的 PPP 计划向小企业提供贷款，以便它们能够保留员工的工资。我们认为，历史记录和 PPP 计划设计选择使得许多黑人拥有的企业获得的 PPP 贷款可能比白人拥有的企业少。使用最新发布的 PPP 计划数据，我们发现黑人拥有的企业获得的贷款比观察到的类似白人拥有的企业低约 50%。在银行竞争较多的地区，这种影响稍小一些，并且随着 PPP 计划的变化允许金融科技公司和其他非传统贷款机构进入，这种影响会随着时间的推移而消失。

我们发现，黑人拥有的企业通过薪资保护计划获得的贷款比具有类似特征的白人拥有的企业低约 50%。然而，随着越来越多的非银行贷款机构（例如金融科技公司）被允许参与该计划并开始批准 PPP 贷款，这种贷款规模的差异随着时间的推移而缩小。银行分行数量较多的邮政编码地区的贷款规模差异也略小。这些结果与先前的研究一致，该研究表明商业银行对黑人借款人存在贷款歧视。这也与研究表明，银行和其他贷款机构之间更多的准入和竞争可以减少歧视相一致。鉴于这些结果，我们建议政策制定者在其计划设计中考虑银行或其他系统内现有的种族不平等，以产生更公平的结果。