Rodrigo Dominguez-Villegas, a co-author of the study, said minority-owned businesses tended not to have relationships with banks or lacked experience with such massive government programs, meaning by the time they applied for the PPP, the funds were depleted. “All those things combined meant that minority-owned businesses had less access to the loans, and it ended up being a program that has the potential to increase racial inequities that were already there before,” he said in an interview.