While the issuing of loans to companies is a core functionality of modern banking, the size, or risk, of a request can exceed the limits, or appetite, of a single bank giving ground for syndication where the funding comes from a collegium of lenders. This not only provides better risk...

We establish that a monopoly bank never uses collateral as a screening device. A pooling equilibrium always exists in which all borrowers pay the same interest rate and put zero collateral. Absence of screening leads to socially inefficient lending in the sense that some socially productive...