This paper studies the impact of reputation/feedback systems on the operation of online credit markets using data from Prosper.com. The ability of lenders to recover their loans is one of the main concerns in these markets, where the problems of asymmetric information are two-fold. On the one hand, borrowers differ in their inherent risks; on the other hand, additional incentives are necessary ...

This paper examines the reporting of bank loans in the financial press during the 2004-2007 period. More specifically, it uses a unique hand-collected data set to examine the frequency and determinants of loan reporting. The motivation is double folded. First, virtually all publicly traded firms borrow from banks. However, despite their widespread use, the reporting of bank loan agreements in t...

Dynamic incentives, where incentives to repay are generated by granting access to future loans, is one of the methodologies used by microfinance institutions (MFIs). In this paper, I present a model of dynamic incentives where lenders are uncertain over how much borrowers value future loans. Loan terms are determined endogenously, and loans become more favorable as the probability of default be...

The social lending market, with over a billion dollars in loans, is a two-sided matching market where borrowers specify demands and lenders specify total budgets and their desired interest rates from each acceptable borrower. Because different borrowers correspond to different risk-return profiles, lenders have preferences over acceptable borrowers; a borrower prefers lenders in order of the in...

The objective of this paper is to investigate the role of social capital in for-profit People-to-People (P2P) lending marketplaces such as Prosper, the largest P2P lending marketplace in the US. We examine whether marketplace members (lenders, borrowers) are able to capitalize on borrowers' accumulated social capital. From a borrower's perspective, we investigate the influence of social capital...

Lender losses on mortgage loans arise from a two-stage process. In the first stage, the borrower stops making payments if and when default is optimal. The second stage is a lengthy and costly period during which the lender employs legal remedies to obtain possession and execute a sale of the collateral. This research uses data on subprime mortgage losses to explore the role of borrower and coll...

We analyze the role of intermediaries on electronic markets using detailed data of more than 14,000 originated loans on an electronic P2P (person-to-person) lending platform. On such an electronic credit market lenders bid for supplying a private loan. Screening of potential borrowers and the monitoring of loan repayment can be delegated to designated group leaders. We find that these participa...

The paper studies an incentive contract in a monopolistic and duopolistic credit market where borrowers are different in risk. One lender is in an advantaged position with respect to the other due to past relations with the borrowers. The features of the equilibrium contract are investigated. It is shown that the equilibrium contract drastically changes between the monopolistic and the duopolis...