This paper offers a possible explanation for the conflicting empirical results in the literature concerning the relation between loan risk and collateral. Specifically, we posit that different economic characteristics or types of collateral pledges may be associated with the empirical dominance...

The literature has documented a positive relationship between the use of credit scoring for small business loans and small business credit availability, broadly defined. However, this literature is hampered by the fact that all of the studies are based on a single 1998 survey of the very largest...

An important theoretical literature motivates collateral as a mechanism that mitigates adverse selection, credit rationing, and other inefficiencies that arise when borrowers hold ex ante private information. There is no clear empirical evidence regarding the central implication of this...

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...

U.S. commercial banks are increasingly using credit scoring models to underwrite small business credits. This paper discusses this technology, evaluates the research findings on the effects of this technology on small business credit availability, and links these findings to a number of research...

We report evidence that salience may have economically significant effects on homeowners' borrowing behavior, through a bias in favour of less salient but more costly loans. We outline a simple model in which some consumers are biased. Under plausible assumptions, the bias may affect prices in...

Since information asymmetries have been identified as an important source of bank profits, it may seem that the establishment of information sharing (e.g., introducing credit bureaus or public registers) will lead to lower investment in acquiring information. However, banks base their decisions...

We report evidence that salience may have economically significant effects on homeowners' borrowing behavior, through a bias in favour of less salient but more costly loans. Survey evidence corroborates the existence of such a bias. We outline a simple model in which some consumers are biased...

Lending is often associated with significant asymmetric information issues between suppliers of funds and their potential borrowers. Banks can screen their borrowers, or can require them to post collateral in order to select creditworthy projects. We find that the potential for longer-term...

Information sharing and collateral reduce adverse selection costs, but are costly for lenders. When a bank learns more about the types of its rival's borrowers through information sharing (e.g., credit bureaus), it might seem that this information should substitute the role of collateral in...