IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spt/apfiba/v9y2019i6f9_6_13.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Occupational Identity Discrimination in Peer-to-Peer Lending

Author

Listed:
  • Xiangbo Cui

Abstract

Using data collected from a leading P2P platform in China, this paper empirically tests the discrimination of investors on the occupational identity of borrowers in online lending. I find that P2P investors discriminate against borrowers who are salary earners in terms of occupational identity while preferring borrowers who are private entrepreneurs. Moreover, this kind of discrimination can be found in borrowers both with high credit ratings and low credit ratings. The findings also imply that the occupational identity of borrowers plays a role of moderating the relationship between the credit rating and the probability of successful funding. Compared with private entrepreneurs, credit rating has a weaker effect on the probability of successful funding among salary earners. However, after examining the default rate, the results show that the default rate of private entrepreneurs is significantly higher than that of salary earners. This indicates that the discrimination of P2P investors is not based on some rational economic roots and is a kind of inefficient tasted-based discrimination. Â JEL classification numbers: H 74, J 71

Suggested Citation

  • Xiangbo Cui, 2019. "Occupational Identity Discrimination in Peer-to-Peer Lending," Journal of Applied Finance & Banking, SCIENPRESS Ltd, vol. 9(6), pages 1-13.
    • Handle: RePEc:spt:apfiba:v:9:y:2019:i:6:f:9_6_13
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.scienpress.com/Upload/JAFB%2fVol%209_6_13.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Anastasia Cozarenco & Ariane Szafarz, 2018. "Gender Biases in Bank Lending: Lessons from Microcredit in France," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 147(3), pages 631-650, February.
    2. Alberto F. Alesina & Francesca Lotti & Paolo Emilio Mistrulli, 2013. "Do Women Pay More For Credit? Evidence From Italy," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 11, pages 45-66, January.
    3. Brandt, Loren & Li, Hongbin, 2003. "Bank discrimination in transition economies: ideology, information, or incentives?," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 387-413, September.
    4. Mingfeng Lin & Siva Viswanathan, 2016. "Home Bias in Online Investments: An Empirical Study of an Online Crowdfunding Market," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(5), pages 1393-1414, May.
    5. Cavalluzzo, Ken S & Cavalluzzo, Linda C, 1998. "Market Structure and Discrimination: The Case of Small Businesses," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 30(4), pages 771-792, November.
    6. Li, Hongbin & Meng, Lingsheng & Wang, Qian & Zhou, Li-An, 2008. "Political connections, financing and firm performance: Evidence from Chinese private firms," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(2), pages 283-299, October.
    7. Blanchard, Lloyd & Zhao, Bo & Yinger, John, 2008. "Do lenders discriminate against minority and woman entrepreneurs?," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(2), pages 467-497, March.
    8. 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.
    9. Claessens, Stijn & Feijen, Erik & Laeven, Luc, 2008. "Political connections and preferential access to finance: The role of campaign contributions," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(3), pages 554-580, June.
    10. David G. Blanchflower & Phillip B. Levine & David J. Zimmerman, 2003. "Discrimination in the Small-Business Credit Market," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 85(4), pages 930-943, November.
    11. Dorfleitner, Gregor & Priberny, Christopher & Schuster, Stephanie & Stoiber, Johannes & Weber, Martina & de Castro, Ivan & Kammler, Julia, 2016. "Description-text related soft information in peer-to-peer lending – Evidence from two leading European platforms," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 169-187.
    12. Bellucci, Andrea & Borisov, Alexander & Zazzaro, Alberto, 2010. "Does gender matter in bank-firm relationships? Evidence from small business lending," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(12), pages 2968-2984, December.
    13. Phelps, Edmund S, 1972. "The Statistical Theory of Racism and Sexism," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 62(4), pages 659-661, September.
    14. Arrow, Kenneth J., 1973. "Higher education as a filter," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 2(3), pages 193-216, July.
    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. Xiyang Hu & Yan Huang & Beibei Li & Tian Lu, 2022. "Uncovering the Source of Machine Bias," Papers 2201.03092, 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. Chen, Xiao & Huang, Bihong & Ye, Dezhu, 2020. "Gender gap in peer-to-peer lending: Evidence from China," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 112(C).
    2. Chen, Xiao & Huang, Bihong & Ye, Dezhu, 2019. "The Gender Gap in Peer-to-Peer Lending: Evidence from the People’s Republic of China," ADBI Working Papers 977, Asian Development Bank Institute.
    3. J. Michelle Brock & Ralph De Haas, 2023. "Discriminatory Lending: Evidence from Bankers in the Lab," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 15(2), pages 31-68, April.
    4. Mascia, Danilo V. & Rossi, Stefania P.S., 2017. "Is there a gender effect on the cost of bank financing?," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 136-153.
    5. Agier, Isabelle & Szafarz, Ariane, 2013. "Microfinance and Gender: Is There a Glass Ceiling on Loan Size?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 165-181.
    6. Dongyu Chen & Xiaolin Li & Fujun Lai, 2017. "Gender discrimination in online peer-to-peer credit lending: evidence from a lending platform in China," Electronic Commerce Research, Springer, vol. 17(4), pages 553-583, December.
    7. Pham, Tho & Talavera, Oleksandr, 2018. "Discrimination, Social Capital, and Financial Constraints: The Case of Viet Nam," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 228-242.
    8. repec:diw:diwfin:diwfin06030 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Pham, Tho & Talavera, Oleksandr, 2018. "Discrimination, Social Capital, and Financial Constraints: The Case of Viet Nam," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 228-242.
    10. Claudia Piras & Andrea Filippo Presbitero & Roberta Rabellotti, 2013. "Definitions Matter: Measuring Gender Gaps in Firms' Access to Credit," Mo.Fi.R. Working Papers 90, Money and Finance Research group (Mo.Fi.R.) - Univ. Politecnica Marche - Dept. Economic and Social Sciences.
    11. Radeef Chundakkadan & Subash Sasidharan, 2022. "Gender gap and access to finance: A cross‐country analysis," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(1), pages 180-207, February.
    12. Beck, T.H.L. & Behr, P. & Madestam, A., 2011. "Sex and Credit : Is There a Gender Bias in Microfinance?," Other publications TiSEM 65849ab0-04f2-4dc9-9824-3, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    13. Iryna Demko & Ana Claudia Sant’Anna, 2023. "Impact of Race, Ethnicity, and Gender on the SBA Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) Loan Amounts," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 37(3), pages 211-229, August.
    14. Thorsten Beck & Patrick Behr & Andreas Madestam, 2011. "Sex and Credit: Is There a Gender Bias in Lending?," Working Papers 411, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    15. Will Dobbie & Andres Liberman & Daniel Paravisini & Vikram Pathania, 2021. "Measuring Bias in Consumer Lending [Loan Prospecting and the Loss of Soft Information]," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 88(6), pages 2799-2832.
    16. Labie, Marc & Méon, Pierre-Guillaume & Mersland, Roy & Szafarz, Ariane, 2015. "Discrimination by microcredit officers: Theory and evidence on disability in Uganda," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 44-55.
    17. Isabelle Agier & Ariane Szafarz, 2013. "Subjectivity in credit allocation to micro-entrepreneurs: evidence from Brazil," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 41(1), pages 263-275, June.
    18. Lu Fang & Henry J. Munneke, 2020. "Gender Equality in Mortgage Lending," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 48(4), pages 957-1003, December.
    19. de Andrés, Pablo & Gimeno, Ricardo & Mateos de Cabo, Ruth, 2021. "The gender gap in bank credit access," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    20. Nataliya Barasinska & Dorothea Schäfer, 2010. "Are Women More Credit-Constrained than Men?: Evidence from a Rising Credit Market," Working Paper / FINESS 6.3, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    21. Anastasia Cozarenco & Ariane Szafarz, 2013. "Female Access to Credit in France: How Microfinance Institutions Import Disparate Treatment from Banks," AMSE Working Papers 1350, Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France, revised Dec 2013.

    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:spt:apfiba:v:9:y:2019:i:6:f:9_6_13. 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: Eleftherios Spyromitros-Xioufis (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.scienpress.com/ .

    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.