Does Collateral Help Mitigate Adverse Selection? A Cross-Country Analysis

34 Pages Posted: 20 Mar 2007

See all articles by Laurent Weill

Laurent Weill

University of Strasbourg - LaRGE Research Center (Laboratoire de Recherche en Gestion et Economie)

Christophe J. Godlewski

University of Strasbourg - Faculty of Law and Business; EM Strasbourg Business School; LaRGE Research Center

Date Written: November 2006

Abstract

We investigate whether collateral helps to solve adverse selection problems. Theory predicts a negative relationship between presence of collateral and risk premium, as collateral constitutes a signalling instrument for the borrower to be charged with a lower risk premium. However, bankers' view and most empirical evidence contradict this prediction in accordance with the observed-risk hypothesis. We provide new evidence with loan-level data and country-level data for a sample of 5843 bank loans from 43 countries. We test whether the degree information asymmetries affects the link between the presence of collateral and risk premium. We include five proxies for the degree of information asymmetries, measuring opacity of financial information, trust, and development. We find that a greater degree of information asymmetries reduces the positive relationship between the presence of collateral and the risk premium. This finding provides support for the adverse selection and observed-risk hypotheses, as both hypotheses may be empirically validated depending of the degree of information asymmetries in the country.

Keywords: collateral, bank, asymmetric information, institutions

JEL Classification: G20, 05

Suggested Citation

Weill, Laurent and Godlewski, Christophe J., Does Collateral Help Mitigate Adverse Selection? A Cross-Country Analysis (November 2006). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=972050 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.972050

Laurent Weill (Contact Author)

University of Strasbourg - LaRGE Research Center (Laboratoire de Recherche en Gestion et Economie) ( email )

61 Avenue de la Forêt Noire
F-67085 Strasbourg Cedex
France

Christophe J. Godlewski

University of Strasbourg - Faculty of Law and Business ( email )

1 place d'Athènes
Strasbourg, 67000
France

HOME PAGE: http://droit.unistra.fr/

EM Strasbourg Business School ( email )

61 Avenue de la Forêt Noire
Strasbourg, 67000
France

HOME PAGE: http://www.em-strasbourg.eu/

LaRGE Research Center ( email )

1 place d'Athènes
Strasbourg, 67000
France

HOME PAGE: http://droit.unistra.fr/

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