信息不对称下信贷市场的惜贷与挤出效应

通过收集和处理借贷平台日常运行中形成的真实数据,本文发现信息不对称条件下信贷市场逆向选择会导致市场萎缩的两类效应;其一为"惜贷"效应:随着信息不对称程度的加深,借贷双方最终达成的合约额度降低和交易匹配时间延长,市场的有效供给萎缩;其二为"挤出"效应:随着信息不对称程度的恶化,借贷双方合约的利率将会升高、期限缩短,市场的有效需求萎缩。通过完善人工智能、大数据和区块链等金融科技并加强银企关系,可以降低信息不对称,进而缓解逆向选择带来的上述不利影响。     

Does the quality of lender–borrower relationships affect small business access to debt? Evidence from Canada and implications in China

The literature on corporate governance and entrepreneurial finance suggests that when lender–borrower relationships are of longer duration, they tend to be more successful in solving the informational asymmetry problems related to small business debt financing. Using the data from Canadian financial markets, this study first confirms this finding, insofar as the quality of lender–borrower relations is affected by traditional solutions to agency conflicts, lender requirements, and negative changes in the borrowing terms offered by lenders. However, in testing this conclusion further, we empirically demonstrate that, counter-intuitively, the quality of the lender–borrower relationship does not affect a small firm's access to debt, or change the terms of borrowing. We also show similar supporting evidence from lenders to small firms in China, where business relationships involving “guanxi” (or connections that are beneficial for both parties) are commonly expected to influence access to debt. The robustness of the study's results is shown by the data from numerous lending institutions in a province of China.     

Cross-ownership and collateral in lending

Information asymmetry is a major obstacle in both formal and informal loan markets. However, when a borrower and a lender are connected via cross-ownership, this obstacle can be significantly reduced. Cross-ownership enables lenders to collect more concrete and precise information about borrowers, and this lowered information asymmetry reduces the likelihood that the lender will require the borrower to provide collateral. Using a data set of 1091 intercorporate loans from China, we find strong support for the prediction that cross-ownership between lenders and borrowers lowers the collateral requirements by more than 50%. This relation is more pronounced for informationally opaque borrowers and for lending firms with a controlling stake in the borrowing firms.     

The Role of Soft Information in a Dynamic Contract Setting: Evidence from the Home Equity Credit Market

Credit underwriting is a dynamic process involving multiple interactions between borrower and lender. During this process, lenders have the opportunity to obtain hard and soft information from the borrower. We analyze more than 108,000 home equity loans and lines‐of‐credit applications to study the role of soft and hard information during underwriting. Our data set allows us to distinguish lender actions that are based strictly on hard information from decisions that involve the collection of soft information. Our analysis confirms the importance of soft information and suggests that its use can be effective in reducing overall portfolio credit losses ex post.     

Mortgage Contracts,Strategic Options and Stochastic Collateral

This paper offers a game-theoretic model for both the analysis and valuation of mortgage contracts in the context of an economy with complete information and complete contingent claims markets. We analyze the equilibrium strategy of the lender, who holds an option over the magnitude of mortgage credit extended per dollar of collateral offered, and the mortgagor, who holds options to default or prepay, in a class of intertemporal mortgage contracts collateralized by property evolving according to a random process which is common knowledge to both parties to the mortgage contract. Using continuous–time arbitrage valuation principles, we derive the value of the mortgage contract to both parties and show, through both analytical solutions and numerical simulations, that Markov perfect equilibria exist in which, among other properties, a lower flow of housing services accruing to the borrower, per dollar of initial house value, and a correspondingly lower rate of effective depreciation, will elicit a larger volume of funds offered by a lender; the amount of credit offered, the values of the contract to both lender and mortgagor, and the expected losses to both parties from costly bankruptcy are highly sensitive to the perceived volatility of the value of the property collateralizing the mortgage, even in an economy with complete markets or risk neutrality on the parts of lender and borrower; the upper limit on mortgage credit offered by a rational lender may be a small fraction of the current fair market value of the property, regardless of the contractual yield offered by the borrower, and will decrease, at each such yield, as bankruptcy costs or housing service flows increase; and under significant but plausible values for bankruptcy and costs of liquidating property under foreclosure, the flow of mortgage credit can become negatively related to the spread of the mortgage yield over the riskless rate, with the lender preferring a lower contractual yield to a higher one.     

Exclusion,competition, and regulation in the retail loan market

Exclusion of borrowers from credit markets became a primary concern for regulators during the recovery from the recent recession. The paper analyzes loan-making institutions that set both interest rates and minimum credit requirements. We propose analytical measures of the degree of borrower exclusion from receiving loans. We analyze five market structures: Single lender, regulated interest rate, entry, interest rate discrimination, and highly-competitive lenders. Interest rate regulation improves total welfare relative to a single lender market. However, entry of a second lender reduces exclusion and generates higher total welfare. In the absence of fixed costs, perfect and Bertrand competition are optimal.     

Credit rationing in P2P lending to SMEs: Do lender-borrower relationships matter?

This paper studies the role of individual P2P investors that are acquainted with the borrower in mitigating credit rationing in P2P lending to SMEs. I use proprietary data provided by one of the biggest Dutch P2P lending platforms, on which personal acquaintances of the borrower are able to invest before other P2P investors do. I find that P2P investors invest more in loans of borrowers to whom they are personally acquainted. More initial investment by investors acquainted with the borrower is subsequently associated with a higher likelihood of obtaining a second loan from the P2P lender, larger investments by other P2P investors and lower ex post defaults. These results are consistent with informal lenders having superior information or monitoring skills and rational herding following informal investors' investment decisions.     

The Insurance Is the Lemon: Failing to Index Contracts

We model the widespread failure of contracts to share risk using available indices. A borrower and lender can share risk by conditioning repayments on an index. The lender has private information about the ability of this index to measure the true state that the borrower would like to hedge. The lender is risk-averse and thus requires a premium to insure the borrower. The borrower, however, might be paying something for nothing if the index is a poor measure of the true state. We provide sufficient conditions for this effect to cause the borrower to choose a nonindexed contract instead.     

Competition and Strategic Information Acquisition in Credit Markets

We investigate the interaction between banks’ use of informationacquisition as a strategic tool and their role in promotingthe efficiency of credit markets when a bank’s abilityto gather information varies with its distance to the borrower.We show that banks acquire proprietary information both to softenlending competition and to extend their market share. As competitionincreases, investments in information acquisition fall, leadingto lower interest rates but also to less efficient lending decisions.Consistent with the recent wave of bank acquisitions, we alsofind that merging for informational reasons with a competitoris an optimal response to industry consolidation.     

The Optimal Choice for Lenders Facing Defaults: Short Sale,Foreclose, or REO

When mortgage borrowers default and have no desire or ability to keep their property, then loss mitigation involves a sale of the property via one of the following options: (1) the lender allows pre-foreclosure “short sale” by the borrower, (2) the lender institutes the foreclosure process under a notice of default and the property is sold during the process by the borrower, and (3) the lender forecloses on the property, takes title, and sells the property in the market as real estate owned (REO). Sale of the property in the above three options is conducted by a motivated seller, either the owner or the lender, who desires to sell the property as quickly as possible. Thus, relative to a no-default sale, the house is most likely to be sold at a discounted price. It is generally expected that the discount would be lower in the case of a “short sale.” This option, however, may result in a longer marketing time, thus a higher total loss, than the other two options. We developed a model that allows simultaneous estimation of price and time-on-market effects of “short sales,” foreclosures, and REO options. We find that the short-sale option has the lowest-price discount, but significantly higher costs associated with marketing time. The pattern of price discount and marketing time reverses as we move to a sale while in the process of foreclosure and to a sale with an REO status.     

Imperfect competition in differentiated credit contract markets

This paper studies a duopolistic credit market in which borrowers differ in risk. In our competition game, one lender is in an advantaged position with respect to the other due to past relations with the borrowers. We investigate the features of the equilibrium contract and show that the best borrower is indifferent between the dominant and the opponent lenders’ contract while the other borrowers prefer that of the dominant lender. Also, repayment and collateral do not depend upon the borrowers’ respective project risk. The author is grateful to Jean-Charles Rochet for his comments and encouragement. The author acknowledges the reviewer’s very careful reading of the paper. The final version has benefited considerably from his comments and suggestions.     

Theory and Evidence on the Resolution of Financial Distress

We analyze a financially distressed owner-managed project. Themain results of the model are: (1) borrower default is an endogenousresponse to the anticipated restructuring–foreclosureoutcome; (2) the lender’s restructuring–foreclosuredecision depends critically on the interaction between projectvalue and industry liquidity; and (3) the lender waits for theindustry to recapitalize before selling assets obtained throughforeclosure. Empirical analysis of a large sample of defaultedcommercial real estate loans supports many of the model predictions,including restructuring–foreclosure outcomes that areconsistent with endogenous borrower default and firesale discountsthat vary depending on industry market conditions at the timeof foreclosure. (JEL G33)     

Differences in the Cost of Mortgage Credit Implications for Discrimination

This paper estimates the mortgage interest rate differences paid by Asian, Hispanic, and African–American borrowers to a national home mortgage lender in the years 1988–1989. Controlling for differences in market rates, rate lock protection, and borrower risk factors, conventional loan interest rates are almost perfectly race-neutral. The single deviation from race-neutrality is that when interest rates fall during the borrower's rate-lock period, only African–American borrowers are unable to capture a share of this decline. Government (FHA and VA) credit models show small premia paid by African–American borrowers of about $1.80 per month on average. In government lending, Hispanic borrowers alone are unable to capture rate declines occurring during the borrower's rate-lock period.     

Mortgage Brokers and the Refinancing Transaction: Evidence from CRA Borrowers

This study adds to an emerging literature on the lending practices of mortgage brokers during the run-up in home prices prior to 2006. Following a sample of low— and moderate-income borrowers through the first years following home purchase, the analysis identifies differences in the refinancing transaction associated with the use of mortgage brokers vs. retail lenders. Specifically, the analysis includes measures of the refinancing process, including whether the lender initiated contact with the borrower, whether the terms of the mortgage changed at closing, and the level of borrower satisfaction in hindsight. Care must be taken in extrapolating from this sample to the broader mortgage market, as all borrowers refinanced out of 30-year fixed-rate purchase mortgages in the Community Advantage Program (CAP). Nevertheless, analysis of this sample offers unique insight into borrowers’ interactions with mortgage brokers during the refinancing transaction. Origination with a mortgage broker, compared with origination through a retail lender, is associated with both a less satisfactory refinancing process and a higher likelihood of refinancing into an adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM).     

Credit Relationships: Evidence from Experiments with Real Bankers

We experimentally examine to what extent long‐term “lender–borrower” relationships mitigate moral hazard. The originality of our research lies in recruiting not only students but also commercial and social bankers. The opportunity to engage in bilateral long‐term relationships mitigates the repayment problem. Lenders take advantage of their long‐term situation by increasing their rates. Consequently, borrowers are incited to take more risk. Improving information disclosure ameliorates the repayment but does not incite lenders to offer more credits. Social bankers exhibit a higher probability of granting a loan and make fairer credit offers to borrowers than the other subject pools do.     

The Creditor Channel of Liquidity Crises

This paper presents a model to study the transmission of liquidity shocks across financial institutions through the creditor channel. In the model, a borrower institution obtains funds from a large institutional lender and small investors. When the large lender's asset market is hit by a liquidity shock, it might decide to withdraw funding extended to the borrower. The potential withdrawal by the large lender causes small investors to panic and to close positions even if the large lender does not. Facing funding problems, the borrower has to cut its activities, contributing to further shocks to the supply of market liquidity. The original shock is exacerbated, which reinforces withdrawals by all creditors. The model helps explain how the spreading of liquidity shocks from the broker–dealer sector to the hedge fund sector and the feedback contribute to a systemic crisis.     

Residential Mortgage Default: The Roles of House Price Volatility, Euphoria and the Borrower’s Put Option

House price volatility; lender and borrower perception of price trends, loan and property features; and the borrower’s put option are integrated in a model of residential mortgage default. These dimensions of the default problem have, to our knowledge, not previously been considered altogether within the same investigation framework. We rely on a sample of individual mortgage loans for 20 counties in Florida, over the period 2001 through 2008, third quarter, with housing price performance obtained from repeat sales analysis of individual transactions. The results from the analysis strongly confirm the significance of the borrower’s put as an operative factor in default. At the same time, the results provide convincing evidence that the experience in Florida is in part driven by lenders and purchasers exhibiting euphoric behavior such that in markets with higher price appreciation there is a willingness to accept recent prior performance as an indicator of future risk. This connection illustrates a familiar moral hazard in the housing market due to the limited information about future prices.     

Credit evaluation,information production,and financial intermediation

Financial intermediaries such as banks, saving and loan institutions, and insurance companies play a large and important role in highly developed economies. The economic significance of financial intermediaries results from their making arrangements between borrowers and lenders more efficiently than if these agents had to trade directly. The intent of this article is to provide a better understanding of the advantage that a financial institution has over an individual lender. This research treats intermediaries as producers of information in the credit evaluation process. The lender produces borrower information that revises the expected profit of the credit decision. Though the production of credit itself holds no economic advantage for institutions over individuals. The opportunity to produce information will provide economies of scale in lending and will help to explain the existence of financial intermediaries.     

Tests of ex ante versus ex post theories of collateral using private and public information

Collateral is a widely used, but not well understood, debt contracting feature. Two broad strands of theoretical literature explain collateral as arising from the existence of either ex ante private information or ex post incentive problems between borrowers and lenders. However, the extant empirical literature has been unable to isolate each of these effects. This paper attempts to do so using a credit registry that is unique in that it allows the researcher to have access to some private information about borrower risk that is unobserved by the lender. The data also include public information about borrower risk, loan contract terms, and ex post performance for both secured and unsecured loans. The results suggest that the ex post theories of collateral are empirically dominant, although the ex ante theories are also valid for customers with short borrower–lender relations that are relatively unknown to the lender.     

The role of lender country factors in cross border bank lending

This article considers the cross-border lending stock from 19 advanced countries to European countries using quarterly data for 1999–2016. An extended model based on home and host country characteristics conditioned on distance and mass primarily measured by GDP is used to explain the behaviour of cross-border lending stocks. We focus particularly on the competitive structure of domestic banking markets and on the role of EU integration using indicators from the New Industrial Economics literature. Our results suggest EU integration has had a large effect on cross-border lending, although this has been partly reversed after Euro debt crisis. This reversal probably arises more from the actions of home country bank regulators rather than from the rise in risk premia in host countries. We show that in general lender rather than borrower factors are more important, and that more concentrated or less competitive lender countries do more cross border lending, especially in less concentrated or more competitive borrowers. Our results are robust across a range of specifications.