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Digital Collateral

Author

Listed:
  • Paul Gertler
  • Brett Green
  • Catherine Wolfram

Abstract

A new form of secured lending using “digital collateral” has recently emerged, most prominently in low- and middle-income countries. Digital collateral relies on lockout technology, which allows the lender to temporarily disable the flow value of the collateral to the borrower without physically repossessing it. We explore this new form of credit in a model and a field experiment using school-fee loans digitally secured with a solar home system. Securing a loan with digital collateral drastically reduced default rates (by 19 percentage points) and increased the lender’s rate of return (by 49 percentage points). Using a variant of the Karlan and Zinman (2009) methodology, we decompose the total effect on repayment and find that roughly two-thirds is attributable to moral hazard, and one-third to adverse selection. In addition, access to digitally secured school-fee loans significantly increased school enrollment and school-related expenditures without detrimental effects on households’ balance sheets.

Suggested Citation

  • Paul Gertler & Brett Green & Catherine Wolfram, 2024. "Digital Collateral," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 139(3), pages 1713-1766.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:qjecon:v:139:y:2024:i:3:p:1713-1766.
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    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/qje/qjae003
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