Delegated Monitoring and Moral Hazard in Underdeveloped Credit Markets
23 Pages Posted: 5 Feb 2007
Abstract
This paper originates from the current move to individual-based lending systems by many microfinance institutions and the fear that this move will lead to a decrease in access to credit for the poor. More specifically, the paper examines how an individual-based lending scheme can be devised such that moral hazard issues can be addressed, even when straight forward individual lending is unable to do so. We show that the moral hazard problem can be solved if microfinance institutions hire informal lenders to monitor the borrowers. In addition, we show that by offering the informal lender a demandable debt contract a simple incentive scheme could be obtained that induces the informal lender to collect the necessary information, and to truthfully reveal this information.
Keywords: Moral Hazard, Underdeveloped Credit Markets, Delegated Monitoring
JEL Classification: D82, O16, O17
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?
Recommended Papers
-
Using Experimental Economics to Measure Social Capital and Predict Financial Decisions
-
Observing Unobservables: Identifying Information Asymmetries with a Consumer Credit Field Experiment
By Dean S. Karlan and Jonathan Zinman
-
Observing Unobservables: Identifying Information Asymmetries with a Consumer Credit Field Experiment
By Dean S. Karlan and Jonathan Zinman