Exogenous Shocks, Credit Reports and Access to Credit : Evidence from Colombian Coffee Producers

Credit reporting systems have become a widespread tool to assess the creditworthiness of prospective borrowers. This paper studies the implications for credit access of using them in contexts where exogenous and transitory shocks affect income and repayment. Using a novel administrative data set with the near universe of formal loans to coffee producers in Colombia together with data from close to 1,200 rainfall stations, I show that transitory weather shocks lead to lower rates of loan repayment, lower credit scores, and more frequent denials of future loan applications. I present evidence that affected producers' incomes and ability to repay recover more quickly from shocks than credit access. This implies that these producers become credit constrained despite their ability to repay a loan. Insurance, contingency-dependent repayment schemes, or the inclusion of information on exogenous shocks in credit scoring models have the potential to alleviate the problem