Judging Borrowers by the Company They Keep: Friendship Networks and Information Asymmetry in Online Peer-to-Peer Lending
Western Finance Association 2009 Annual Meeting Paper
48 Pages Posted: 9 Mar 2009 Last revised: 29 Sep 2011
Date Written: July 1, 2011
Abstract
We study the online market for peer-to-peer (P2P) lending, in which individuals bid on unsecured microloans sought by other individual borrowers. Using a large sample of consummated and failed listings from the largest online P2P lending marketplace - Prosper.com, we find that the online friendships of borrowers act as signals of credit quality. Friendships increase the probability of successful funding, lower interest rates on funded loans, and are associated with lower ex-post default rates. The economic effects of friendships show a striking gradation based on the roles and identities of the friends. We discuss the implications of our findings for the disintermediation of financial markets and the design of decentralized electronic markets.
Keywords: peer-to-peer lending, social networks, information asymmetry
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