IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/orisre/v32y2021i4p1140-1154.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Competition and Distortion: A Theory of Information Bias on the Peer-to-Peer Lending Market

Author

Listed:
  • Zhenhua Wu

    (School of Management, Nanjing University, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210000, P.R. China)

  • Lin Hu

    (College of Business and Economics, Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory 2601, Australia)

  • Zhijie Lin

    (School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, P.R. China)

  • Yong Tan

    (Michael G. Foster School of Business, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195)

Abstract

Despite the popular emergence of peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms, relevant research investigating the role of these platforms on P2P markets still lags. In this paper, we present a model to study the market incentives of P2P lending platforms’ optimal information-reporting strategies when the following exist: (i) uncertainty on the return of loans and (ii) competition from entrants. We focus on the information bias of platforms driven by demand-side actors—investors’ optimism/pessimism about risk—while we keep the platforms being rational. We characterize platforms’ equilibrium reporting strategies under different market conditions. Surprisingly, we find that when uncertainty is significant, and the threat of entry is strong but not detrimental, the platform has incentives to bias information toward investors’ biased beliefs. This result demonstrates a case where competition and uncertainty may jointly lead to information bias. However, a properly designed uncertainty-resolution mechanism could reduce the incentive. Our findings contribute to the literature on the P2P lending market by analyzing platform decisions and offer policy implications for regulating P2P lending market.

Suggested Citation

  • Zhenhua Wu & Lin Hu & Zhijie Lin & Yong Tan, 2021. "Competition and Distortion: A Theory of Information Bias on the Peer-to-Peer Lending Market," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 32(4), pages 1140-1154, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:orisre:v:32:y:2021:i:4:p:1140-1154
    DOI: 10.1287/isre.2020.0956
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/isre.2020.0956
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/isre.2020.0956?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bengt Holmstrom & Jean Tirole, 1997. "Financial Intermediation, Loanable Funds, and The Real Sector," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(3), pages 663-691.
    2. Uri Simonsohn & Dan Ariely, 2008. "When Rational Sellers Face Nonrational Buyers: Evidence from Herding on eBay," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 54(9), pages 1624-1637, September.
    3. Malcolm Baker & Jeffrey Wurgler, 2006. "Investor Sentiment and the Cross‐Section of Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(4), pages 1645-1680, August.
    4. Douglas W. Diamond, 1984. "Financial Intermediation and Delegated Monitoring," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 51(3), pages 393-414.
    5. Adam Brandenburger & Ben Polak, 1996. "When Managers Cover Their Posteriors: Making the Decisions the Market Wants to See," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 27(3), pages 523-541, Autumn.
    6. Bengt Holmstrom, 1982. "Moral Hazard in Teams," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 13(2), pages 324-340, Autumn.
    7. Chen, Ning & Ghosh, Arpita & Lambert, Nicolas S., 2014. "Auctions for social lending: A theoretical analysis," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 367-391.
    8. Gorton, Gary B. & Pennacchi, George G., 1995. "Banks and loan sales Marketing nonmarketable assets," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 389-411, June.
    9. Mingfeng Lin & Nagpurnanand R. Prabhala & Siva Viswanathan, 2013. "Judging Borrowers by the Company They Keep: Friendship Networks and Information Asymmetry in Online Peer-to-Peer Lending," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 59(1), pages 17-35, August.
    10. Santomero, Anthony M, 1984. "Modeling the Banking Firm: A Survey," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 16(4), pages 576-602, November.
    11. Boris Vallée & Yao Zeng, 2019. "Marketplace Lending: A New Banking Paradigm?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 32(5), pages 1939-1982.
    12. Juanjuan Zhang & Peng Liu, 2012. "Rational Herding in Microloan Markets," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(5), pages 892-912, May.
    13. Kevin C. Murdock & Thomas F. Hellmann & Joseph E. Stiglitz, 2000. "Liberalization, Moral Hazard in Banking, and Prudential Regulation: Are Capital Requirements Enough?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(1), pages 147-165, March.
    14. Scharfstein, David S & Stein, Jeremy C, 1990. "Herd Behavior and Investment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(3), pages 465-479, June.
    15. Amir Sufi, 2007. "Information Asymmetry and Financing Arrangements: Evidence from Syndicated Loans," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 62(2), pages 629-668, April.
    16. Leland, Hayne E & Pyle, David H, 1977. "Informational Asymmetries, Financial Structure, and Financial Intermediation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 32(2), pages 371-387, May.
    17. Bhattacharya Sudipto & Chiesa Gabriella, 1995. "Proprietary Information, Financial Intermediation, and Research Incentives," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 4(4), pages 328-357, October.
    18. Abhijit V. Banerjee, 1992. "A Simple Model of Herd Behavior," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(3), pages 797-817.
    19. Benjamin J. Keys & Tanmoy Mukherjee & Amit Seru & Vikrant Vig, 2010. "Did Securitization Lead to Lax Screening? Evidence from Subprime Loans," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(1), pages 307-362.
    20. Prendergast, Canice, 1993. "A Theory of "Yes Men."," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(4), pages 757-770, September.
    21. Jefferson Duarte & Stephan Siegel & Lance Young, 2012. "Trust and Credit: The Role of Appearance in Peer-to-peer Lending," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 25(8), pages 2455-2484.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mendelson Haim & Zhu Mingxi, 2024. "Optimal Information Acquisition Strategies: The Case of Online Lending," Papers 2410.05539, arXiv.org.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Adair Morse, 2015. "Peer-to-Peer Crowdfunding: Information and the Potential for Disruption in Consumer Lending," NBER Working Papers 20899, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Tetyana Balyuk, 2023. "FinTech Lending and Bank Credit Access for Consumers," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(1), pages 555-575, January.
    3. Ongena, Steven & Kara, Alper & Marqués-Ibáñez, David, 2011. "Securitization and lending standards: evidence from the wholesale loan market," Working Paper Series 1362, European Central Bank.
    4. Committee, Nobel Prize, 2022. "Financial Intermediation and the Economy," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2022-2, Nobel Prize Committee.
    5. Serena Gallo, 2021. "Fintech platforms: Lax or careful borrowers’ screening?," Financial Innovation, Springer;Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, vol. 7(1), pages 1-33, December.
    6. Ryan Ball & Robert M. Bushman & Florin P. Vasvari, 2008. "The Debt‐Contracting Value of Accounting Information and Loan Syndicate Structure," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(2), pages 247-287, May.
    7. Sharjil M. Haque & Simon Mayer & Teng Wang, 2024. "How Private Equity Fuels Non-Bank Lending," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2024-015, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    8. Gabriel Jiménez & Steven Ongena & José‐Luis Peydró & Jesús Saurina, 2014. "Hazardous Times for Monetary Policy: What Do Twenty‐Three Million Bank Loans Say About the Effects of Monetary Policy on Credit Risk‐Taking?," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 82(2), pages 463-505, March.
    9. Carla Martínez-Climent & Ana Zorio-Grima & Domingo Ribeiro-Soriano, 2018. "Financial return crowdfunding: literature review and bibliometric analysis," International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, Springer, vol. 14(3), pages 527-553, September.
    10. Kristian S. Blickle & Quirin Fleckenstein & Sebastian Hillenbrand & Anthony Saunders, 2020. "The Myth of the Lead Arranger’s Share," Staff Reports 922, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    11. Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W., 2010. "Unstable banking," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(3), pages 306-318, September.
    12. Liao, Tsai-Ling & Huang, Chih-Jen & Wu, Chieh-Yuan, 2011. "Do fund managers herd to counter investor sentiment?," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 64(2), pages 207-212, February.
    13. Belleflamme, Paul & Omrani, Nessrine & Peitz, Martin, 2015. "The economics of crowdfunding platforms," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 11-28.
    14. Bollaert, Helen & Lopez-de-Silanes, Florencio & Schwienbacher, Armin, 2021. "Fintech and access to finance," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    15. Kara, Alper & Marques-Ibanez, David & Ongena, Steven, 2016. "Securitization and lending standards: Evidence from the European wholesale loan market," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 107-127.
    16. Kai Lu & Zaiyan Wei & Tat Y. Chan, 2022. "Information Asymmetry Among Investors and Strategic Bidding in Peer-to-Peer Lending," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 33(3), pages 824-845, September.
    17. Jiang, Cuixia & Xu, Qifa & Zhang, Weiming & Li, Mengting & Yang, Shanlin, 2018. "Does automatic bidding mechanism affect herding behavior? Evidence from online P2P lending in China," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 20(C), pages 39-44.
    18. Fenner, Arved & Klein, Philipp & Mössinger, Carina, 2021. "Better be careful: The replenishment of ABS backed by SME loans," Discussion Papers 30/2021, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    19. Arnold, M., 2017. "The impact of central clearing on banks’ lending discipline," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 91-114.
    20. Pagès, Henri, 2013. "Bank monitoring incentives and optimal ABS," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 30-54.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:orisre:v:32:y:2021:i:4:p:1140-1154. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.