Why is Private lending so Popular?

We received no outside funding for this project and have no material financial relationships to disclose. Thanks to Radhika Patel for research assistance and to seminar participants at Boston University, University of Cambridge, University of Chicago Private Firm Symposium, Columbia, Duke, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, the Finance, Organizations, and Markets (FOM) Research group, Harvard Business School, the Stockholm School of Economics, and Yale SOM for helpful comments. We are especially grateful to Alvin Chen, Nuno Clara, Victoria Ivashina, Bob Lyons, Per Strömberg, Tetiana Davydiuk, Tatyana Marchuk, Constantine Yannelis, and Lucy White for helpful comments. All errors are our own. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.