Credit layering in informal financial markets

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Mansuri, Ghazala
• 署名单位: The World Bank
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3878
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2006.12.001
• 发表日期: 2007
• 页码: 715-730
• 关键词: credit layering; Informal credit; limited liability; Interlinkage; strategic interaction

摘要

Informal lenders with access to markets or capital often find it attractive to delegate loan provision to downstream lenders who have an information or enforcement advantage in dealing with particular borrowers. In this paper we examine the conditions under which such an arrangement is preferred by two informal lenders, a landlord and a merchant, who compete in loan provision to tenant farmers differentiated by wealth. We show that credit layering is preferred only when tenants are sufficiently poor. In this case, the trader lends to tenant farmers via a contract with their landlord. Otherwise, only the trader lends. As a consequence, a pattern of borrowing emerges in which relatively wealthy tenants borrow from merchants while poor tenants borrow mainly from their landlords. Interlinkage between land and credit thus arises only for a subset of tenants and purely as a consequence of credit layering. This pattern is shown to be supported empirically. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.