Discrimination in Lending: Theory and Evidence

Using a general equilibrium model of credit market discrimination, I find that both taste-based discrimination and statistical discrimination have similar predictions for the intergroup differences in loan terms. The commonly held view has been that if taste-based discrimination exists, loans approved to minority borrowers will have higher expected profitability than those to majorities with comparable credit background. I show that the validity of this profitability view depends crucially on how expected loan profitability is measured. I also show that taste-based discrimination must exist if loans to minority borrowers have higher expected rates of return or lower expected rates of default loss than those to majorities with the same exogenous characteristics observed by lender at the time of loan originations. My analysis suggests that the valid method to test for taste-based discrimination should be reduced-form regressions. Empirically, I fail to find supporting evidence for the existence of taste-based discrimination.     

Maturity and Corporate Loan Pricing

We investigate the relation between corporate loan spreads and maturity to test whether lenders are compensated for longer maturity loans (tradeoff hypothesis) or limit their exposure by forcing riskier borrowers to take short‐term loans (credit‐quality hypothesis). Earlier studies reject the tradeoff hypothesis. We use the LPC DealScan database to create a matched sample of pairs of loans to the same borrower on the same day holding credit quality constant. We perform mean of difference tests and cross‐sectional and regression analyses, and find evidence supporting both the tradeoff and credit quality hypotheses.     

Borrower Self-Selection,Underwriting Costs,and Subprime Mortgage Credit Supply

In the U.S., households participate in two very different types of credit markets. Personal lending is characterized by continuous risk-based pricing in which lenders offer households a continuous distribution of borrowing possibilities based on estimates of their creditworthiness. This contrasts sharply with mortgage markets where lenders specialize in specific risk categories of borrowers and mortgage supply is stepwise linear. The contrast between continuous lending for personal loans and discrete lending by specialized lenders for mortgage credit has led to concerns regarding the efficiency and equity of mortgage lending. This paper sheds both theoretical and empirical light on the differences in the two credit markets. The theory section demonstrates why, in a perfectly competitive credit market where all lenders have the same underwriting technology, mortgage credit supply curves are stepwise linear and lenders specialize in prime or subprime lending. The empirical section then provides evidence that borrowers are being effectively sorted based on risk characteristics by the market.     

Creditor Learning and Discrimination in Lending

I study the implications of creditor learning for the estimated racial disparity in access to credit. Utilizing a dataset of mortgage lending, I find that the estimated racial disparity in loan approval rates declines with the length of the borrower??s credit history. In addition, minority borrowers improve significantly their chances of obtaining a loan by accumulating longer credit histories, with the improvements being the largest for those with no credit history. Importantly, I find no significant racial disparity among borrowers with long credit histories, suggesting that one cannot reject the null hypothesis of no taste-based discrimination taking place. I also conduct a number of tests to detect statistical discrimination, which yield inconclusive results.     

Information transfers among co-owned firms

We study how lenders in blockheld firms exploit the information on the other holdings of equity blockholders to learn their attitude toward creditors. In the presence of the conflict of interest between lenders and equityholders, information on how blockholders behave in the other firms they control provides the lenders with key information about potential blockholder behavior. We test this hypothesis using data on US public firms over the 2001–2008 period. We show that the financial conditions of these co-owned firms affect how lenders value other firms in which the owner has a major stake. Bad news on credit quality in co-owned firms raise the firm's credit risk. Our identification is based on the instrumental variables estimation where we instrument the changes in credit risk of co-owned firms by the natural disaster events in the counties of co-owned firm headquarters.     

The Monitoring Incentive of Transactional and Relationship Lenders: Evidence from the Syndicated Loan Market

We identify a group of lenders specializing in syndicating tradable loans (referred to as transactional lenders [TLs]). We show that borrowers borrowing from TLs experience worse operating performance and more severe credit quality deterioration after loan origination compared to those borrowing from relationship lenders. This difference in the postloan issue performance remains robust after controlling for the potential self‐selection of the lender type, or using percentage of traded loans out of all syndicated loans to capture lenders’ propensity for syndicating tradable loans. Our results also remains qualitatively the same after we drop various types of risky loans.     

Performance pricing in bank debt contracts

Performance pricing links bank debt interest rate spreads to a borrower's performance via two options. Interest-decreasing performance pricing reduces spreads if credit quality improves. It is more common when prepayment is more likely or costly and when adverse selection costs are higher, and is less common when multiple performance measures better predict credit quality. Interest-increasing performance pricing increases spreads if credit quality deteriorates. It is more common when lenders reduce interest rates to add this provision, when downgrades are more likely, and when moral hazard costs are higher. We find lower spreads for contracts with interest increasing performance pricing.     

Asymmetric Information about Collateral Values

I empirically analyze credit market outcomes when competing lenders are differentially informed about the expected return from making a loan. I study the residential mortgage market, where property developers often cooperate with vertically integrated mortgage lenders to offer financing to buyers of new homes. I show that these integrated lenders have superior information about the construction quality of individual homes and exploit this information to lend against higher quality collateral, decreasing foreclosures by up to 40%. To compensate for this adverse selection on collateral quality, nonintegrated lenders charge higher interest rates when competing against a better‐informed integrated lender.     

Does Borrowing from Banks Cost More than Borrowing from the Market?

This paper investigates the pricing of bank loans relative to capital market debt. The analysis uses a novel sample of loans matched with bond spreads from the same firm on the same date. After accounting for seniority, lenders earn a large premium relative to the bond-implied credit spread. In a sample of secured term loans to noninvestment-grade firms, the average premium is 140 to 170 bps or about half of the all-in-drawn spread. This is the first direct evidence of firms' willingness to pay for bank credit and raises questions about the nature of competition in the loan market.     

Do some lenders have information advantages? Evidence from Japanese credit market data

Using detailed Japanese credit data, we test for the existence of a credit market hierarchy. Empirical tests indicate that firms with information problems are more likely to carry higher proportions of relationship loans from main banks than non-main banks, holding constant risk and control factors. We further examine credit specialization on the part of lenders by testing the relationship between client firms' information and risk characteristics and the concentration of loans obtained from depository institutions versus other financial institutions. However, no significant differences in information superiority between these two types of financial institutions are found. We conclude that our evidence supports the credit market hierarchy hypothesis for Japanese main banks in particular but not depository institutions in general.     

基于市场定价测算信用评级指标权重

一般而言,投资者会参考一系列指标来综合评估企业债券的信用水平,合理设定这些指标的权重是相对准确地衡量债券信用水平的关键。文章基于有效市场假定,在分类梳理备选信用指标的基础上,将由加权信用指标计算的债券信用估值差异与债券实际收益率差异进行拟合,以此确定最优的信用指标权重组合,以期为简要分析企业信用资质和债券定价判断提供一个参考。     

Do credit unions use their tax advantage to benefit members? Evidence from a cost function

This paper examines whether the credit union income tax subsidy is passed along to members or consumed by managers. To that end, we estimate a translog cost function for credit unions and mutual thrifts that is tailored to the unique objectives of mutually owned depository institutions. We find that credit unions with residential common bonds have higher costs than mutual thrifts, but single common bond occupational and associational credit unions are more cost efficient. Thus, it appears that residential credit unions engage in expense preference behavior and hence redirect some portion of their tax benefit away from members.     

Uncertainty,Incentives, and Misallocation

This paper identifies a new propagation mechanism by which the effects of business cycle shocks amplify in the context of the dynamic stochastic general equilibrium framework. Business cycle shocks, such as heightened uncertainty, and positive monetary shocks endogenously magnify the cross-sectional dispersion in idiosyncratic productivity. This induces entrepreneurs, who have asset substitution incentive, to distort the quality of an investment project, which amplifies the response of investment and output. Moreover, lenders reallocate credit from firms with a high marginal product of capital, in which the asset substitution problem is more prevalent, to firms with a low marginal product of capital, which in turn further depresses aggregate economic activities. A policy that subsidizes lenders to firms with a high marginal product during a recession improves the allocation of loans. Empirical evidence from the NBER-CES Manufacturing Industry Database provides support for the model's predictions.     

THE STATE OF THE HOME EQUITY SECURITIES MARKET (AND HOW TO IMPROVE IT): REPORT FROM A RECENT CONFERENCE

In 1998, a year which saw the origination of a record volume of single-family mortgage loans, at least 12 of the top 20 home equity lenders experienced severe problems related to their business models, accounting practices, and access to the debt and equity markets. In march of 1999, Banc of America Securities (BAS) sponsored a conference to explore the causes of and possible solutions to these problems.
This article begins by tracing the industry's problems to lenders' inability to sell the subordinated and residual classes of home equity securities, and goes on to argue that the key to the regular distribution of these securities lies in enhancing the quality and depth of information that lenders provide investors about the underlying loans. The article discusses four proposals for improving lenders' disclosure—proposals that are designed to increase institutional investors' demand for home equity securities by helping them to assess the prepayment and credit risk associated with the securities.
Following the author's summary of the BAS proposals, the article concludes with selected comments on the future of the home equity securities markets by two panels of experts representing bond insurers and rating agencies.     

Informational synergies in consumer credit

We investigate whether lenders can realize informational synergies by simultaneously obtaining private information from different accounts of the same borrower. Synergies exist if such information is complementary to each other. We focus on consumer credit, using 3.5 million observations from checking accounts and credit card accounts of the same individuals during 2007–2014. First, activity from both accounts is complementary for estimating consumer default beyond credit scores, borrower characteristics and relationship characteristics. Checking accounts display warning indications about consumer default earlier and more accurately than credit card accounts. Second, decision errors are lower when lenders consider cross-product information. The evidence suggests significant informational synergies that are important for the supply and allocation of credit.     

Connected Lending in Bank Lines of Credit

Journal of Financial Services Research - We find that firms usually obtain larger credit lines if their executives have common past employers or past board memberships with lenders. The effect not...     

Credit Unions: A Theoretical and Empirical Overview

In 2009 there were over 49,330 credit unions across 98 countries with more than 184 million members and approximately $1,354 billion in assets. There is a great diversity within the credit union movement across these countries. This reflects the various economic, historic and cultural contexts within which credit unions operate. This paper traces the evolution of the credit union movement. It examines credit union objectives, and considers issues relating to efficiency, technology adoption, product diversification, merger, failure and demutualization. The regulatory environment within which credit unions operate is also explored under the themes of interest rate regulation, common bond requirements, taxation, deposit insurance and capital regulation. The overview also considers demutualization and the costs and benefits to credit unions of altering their organizational form.     

Small business lending and the bank-branch network

I examine the role of bank’s distance to the borrower and the proximity of other lenders for the transmission of financial shocks across the bank network. I use a novel dataset of small business lending based on information from the Community Reinvestment Act, which measures lending at census tract groups within each county and yields rich variation in the bank–borrower and borrower–competitor distance. I document that small banks with increased liquidity from proximity to local oil booms, originate more loans to firms far from these booms, and lenders with above-average geographic exposure to residential booms reduce lending in census tract groups with stable house prices. Bank–borrower distance is important for credit expansions, with closer firms receiving more credit, but not for contractions. Proximity of competitors plays a key role: consistent with theoretical predictions, both credit expansions and contractions disproportionately affect markets where the bank faces higher competition.     

Did Regulation Fair Disclosure affect credit markets?

This study assesses whether the implementation of Regulation Fair Disclosure (Reg FD) has affected the quantity and quality of information in credit markets. We find that, after Reg FD, borrowing from new lenders was associated with a higher loan spread. We also document that, after Reg FD, (1) borrowers became more dependent on relationship lending; (2) lead lenders retained a higher loan share; and (3) a typical loan syndicate involved a smaller number of participating lenders. We interpret these results as evidence of an increased level of information asymmetry in credit markets after Reg FD.     

A dynamic theory of multiple borrowing

Multiple borrowing—when borrower obtains overlapping loans from multiple lenders—is a common phenomenon in many credit markets. We build a tractable, dynamic model of multiple borrowing and show that, because overlapping creditors can impose default externalities on each other, expanding financial access by introducing more lenders can backfire. Capital allocation is distorted away from the most productive uses. Entrepreneurs choose inefficient endeavors with low returns to scale. These problems are exacerbated when investments become more pledgeable or when borrowers have access to more lenders, explaining why increased access to finance does not always improve outcomes.