What Does Peer-to-Peer Lending Evidence Say About the Risk-Taking Channel of Monetary Policy?
71 Pages Posted: 14 Oct 2019
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What Does Peer-to-Peer Lending Evidence Say About the Risk-taking Channel of Monetary Policy?
Date Written: 2019
Abstract
This paper uses loan application-level data from a peer-to-peer lending platform to study the risk-taking channel of monetary policy. By employing a direct ex-ante measure of risk-taking and estimating the simultaneous equations of loan approval and loan amount, we are the first to provide quantitative evidence of the impact of monetary policy on the risk-taking of nonbank financial institution. We find that the search-for-yield is the main workhorse of the risk-taking effect, while we do not observe consistent findings of risk-shifting from the liquidity change. Monetary policy easing is associated with a higher probability of granting loans to risky borrowers and a greater riskiness of credit allocation, but these changes do not necessarily relate to a larger loan amount on average.
Keywords: monetary policy, risk-taking, nonbank financial institution, peer-to-peer lending, search-for-yield, risk-shifting
JEL Classification: E520, G230
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation