This report provides detailed analyses on the payment practices of online lenders making high-cost, short-term loans online, with an emphasis on outcomes after payment requests fail. The report further measures fees associated with payment requests that fail or overdraft, as well as account...

"Using peer-to-peer (P2P) lending as an example, we show that learning by doing plays an important role in alleviating the information asymmetry between market players. Although the P2P platform (Prosper.com) discloses part of borrowers' credit histories, lenders face serious information...

We use debt crowdfunding data to examine how borrowers' writing style is associated with lender and borrower behavior. Controlling for credit and auction characteristics, lenders bid more aggressively, are more likely to fund, and charge lower rates to borrowers whose writing is more readable,...

We compare two prominent selling mechanisms in online platforms, auctions and posted prices, in the context of Prosper.com, an online peer-to-peer lending marketplace, which switched from auctions to posted prices. We first develop a predictive model using Random Forests to approximate the...

We study how signaling affects equilibrium outcomes and welfare in markets with adverse selection. Using data from an online credit market, we estimate a model of borrowers and lenders where low reserve interest rates can signal low default risk. Comparing a market with and without signaling...

Unlike in a traditional store environment where inventory is directly visible to customers, Internet retailers can selectively choose how to divulge inventory level information to customers. For example, when viewing a particular item page, online shoppers may either see merely “in stock” or...