IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/jec/journl/v9y2013i2p153-184.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Adverse Selection and Moral Hazard in Joint Liability Loan Contracts: Evidence from an Artefactual Field Experiment

Author

Listed:
  • Giorgia Barboni

    (Institute of Economics and LEM, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Pisa, Italy)

  • Alessandra Cassar

    (Department of Economics, University of San Francisco, CA, U.S.A.)

  • Arturo Rodriguez Trejo

    (Department of Economics, University of San Francisco, CA, U.S.A.)

  • Bruce Wydick

    (Department of Economics, University of San Francisco, CA, U.S.A.)

Abstract

We design an artefactual field experiment to study the relationship between joint-liability lending and adverse selection, moral hazard and risk preferences. While theories concerning joint-liability lending have highlighted its ability to mitigate adverse selection in credit transactions, our experimental results indicate that joint-liability lending may actually induce problems of adverse selection. The results of our experiment, carried on in partnership with a Bolivian microlender, show that borrowers exogenously endowed with a risky project are disproportionately likely to choose jointly-liability contracts over individually-liable contracts. This behavior does not appear to be motivated by risk-diversification, but rather by free-riding, as these subjects disproportionally switch from safe to risky projects when exogenously given a joint-liability contract instead of an individual contract. Thus the results of our experiment offer a possible explanation why joint liability loans have diminished in popularity in recent years among both borrowers and microfinance lenders.

Suggested Citation

  • Giorgia Barboni & Alessandra Cassar & Arturo Rodriguez Trejo & Bruce Wydick, 2013. "Adverse Selection and Moral Hazard in Joint Liability Loan Contracts: Evidence from an Artefactual Field Experiment," Journal of Economics and Management, College of Business, Feng Chia University, Taiwan, vol. 9(2), pages 153-184, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:jec:journl:v:9:y:2013:i:2:p:153-184
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.jem.org.tw/content/pdf/Vol.9No.2/04.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. A. Colin Cameron & Jonah B. Gelbach & Douglas L. Miller, 2008. "Bootstrap-Based Improvements for Inference with Clustered Errors," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 90(3), pages 414-427, August.
    2. Ghatak, Maitreesh, 1999. "Group lending, local information and peer selection," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(1), pages 27-50, October.
    3. Dean S. Karlan, 2005. "Using Experimental Economics to Measure Social Capital and Predict Financial Decisions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(5), pages 1688-1699, December.
    4. Alessandra Cassar & Luke Crowley & Bruce Wydick, 2007. "The effect of social capital on group loan repayment: evidence from field experiments," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 117(517), pages 85-106, February.
    5. repec:pri:rpdevs:gamespaper.pdf is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Ghatak, Maitreesh & Guinnane, Timothy W., 1999. "The economics of lending with joint liability: theory and practice," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(1), pages 195-228, October.
    7. Abigail Barr & Garance Genicot, 2008. "Risk Sharing, Commitment, and Information: An Experimental Analysis," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 6(6), pages 1151-1185, December.
    8. Abhijit V. Banerjee & Timothy Besley & Timothy W. Guinnane, 1994. "Thy Neighbor's Keeper: The Design of a Credit Cooperative with Theory and a Test," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(2), pages 491-515.
    9. Wydick, Bruce, 1999. "Can Social Cohesion Be Harnessed to Repair Market Failures? Evidence from Group Lending in Guatemala," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 109(457), pages 463-475, July.
    10. Bruce Wydick, 2001. "Group Lending under Dynamic Incentives as a Borrower Discipline Device," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 5(3), pages 406-420, October.
    11. repec:bla:rdevec:v:5:y:2001:i:3:p:406-20 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. González-Vega, Claudio & Villafani-Ibarnegaray, Marcelo, 2007. "Las microfinanzas en la profundización del sistema financiero. El caso de Bolivia," El Trimestre Económico, Fondo de Cultura Económica, vol. 0(293), pages 5-65, enero-mar.
    13. Alessandra Cassar & Bruce Wydick, 2010. "Does social capital matter? Evidence from a five-country group lending experiment," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 62(4), pages 715-739, October.
    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. Kun Liang & Cuiqing Jiang & Zhangxi Lin & Weihong Ning & Zelin Jia, 2017. "The nature of sellers’ cyber credit in C2C e-commerce: the perspective of social capital," Electronic Commerce Research, Springer, vol. 17(1), pages 133-147, March.
    2. Shahid Razzaque, 2019. "Choice of Microfinance Contracts and Repayment Rates under Individual Lending: An Artefactual Field Experiment from Pakistan," PIDE-Working Papers 2019:166, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics.

    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. Hameem Raees Chowdhury, 2016. "Joint-Liability in Microcredit: Evidence from Bangladesh," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 44(1), pages 105-129, March.
    2. Attanasio, O.P. & Augsburg, B. & de Haas, R. & Fitzsimons, E. & Harmgart, H., 2013. "Group Lending or Individual Lending? Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment in Rural Mongolia," Discussion Paper 2013-074, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    3. Aga, B.K. & Tesfay, G.B., 2018. "How Should Rural Financial Cooperatives Be Best Organized? Evidence from Ethiopia," 2018 Conference, July 28-August 2, 2018, Vancouver, British Columbia 277735, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    4. Dean S. Karlan, 2005. "Social Capital and Group Banking," Working Papers 181, Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Research Program in Development Studies..
    5. Xavier Giné & Pamela Jakiela & Dean Karlan & Jonathan Morduch, 2010. "Microfinance Games," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(3), pages 60-95, July.
    6. Joel M. Guttman, 2010. "Reputation, Trust and the Logic of Group Lending," NFI Working Papers 2010-WP-02, Indiana State University, Scott College of Business, Networks Financial Institute.
    7. Kibrom A. ABAY & Bethelhem KORU & Gashaw Tadesse ABATE & Guush BERHANE, 2019. "How Should Rural Financial Cooperatives Be Best Organized? Evidence From Ethiopia," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 90(1), pages 187-215, March.
    8. Al-Azzam, Moh'd & Carter Hill, R. & Sarangi, Sudipta, 2012. "Repayment performance in group lending: Evidence from Jordan," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(2), pages 404-414.
    9. Alessandra Cassar & Lucas Crowley & Bruce Wydick, 2005. "The effect of social capital on group loan repayment: Evidence from artefactual field experiments," Artefactual Field Experiments 00036, The Field Experiments Website.
    10. DeanS. Karlan, 2007. "Social connections and group banking," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 117(517), pages 52-84, February.
    11. Fischer, Gregory, 2013. "Contract structure, risk sharing and investment choice," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 46796, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    12. Orazio Attanasio & Britta Augsburg & Ralph De Haas, 2019. "Microcredit Contracts, Risk Diversification and Loan Take-Up," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 17(6), pages 1797-1842.
    13. Al-Azzam, Moh’d & Parmeter, Christopher F. & Sarangi, Sudipta, 2020. "On the complex relationship between different aspects of social capital and group loan repayment," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 92-107.
    14. Fischer, Gregory, 2011. "Contract structure, risk sharing and investment choice," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 41890, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    15. Selay Sahan & Euan Phimister, 2023. "Repayment performance of joint‐liability microcredits: Metropolitan evidence on social capital and group names," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 75(2), pages 287-311, April.
    16. Gelade, Wouter & Guirkinger, Catherine, 2018. "The enforcement advantage of external monitoring: Lessons from an experiment with joint-liability groups in Burkina Faso," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 307-325.
    17. Li Gan & Manuel A. Hernandez & Yanyan Liu, 2018. "Group Lending With Heterogeneous Types," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 56(2), pages 895-913, April.
    18. Thilo Klein, 2015. "Does Anti-Diversification Pay? A One-Sided Matching Model of Microcredit," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1521, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    19. Joel M. Guttman, 2006. "Repayment Performance in Group Lending Programs: A Survey," NFI Working Papers 2006-WP-01, Indiana State University, Scott College of Business, Networks Financial Institute.
    20. Hisaki Kono, 2006. "Is group lending a good enforcement scheme for achieving high repayment rates? Evidence from field experiments in vietnam," Artefactual Field Experiments 00075, The Field Experiments Website.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    joint-liability lending; microfinance; asymmetric information; adverse selection; social capital; artefactual field experiment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C9 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments
    • O1 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:jec:journl:v:9:y:2013:i:2:p:153-184. 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: Yi-Ju Su (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cbfcutw.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.