Screening Peers Softly: Inferring the Quality of Small Borrowers
研究发现，在线借贷平台上的非专业同行放贷人预测借款人违约的准确率比其精确信用评分高出45%，并达到了使用所有标准财务信息的经济计量学家预测能力的87%，尤其对低质量借款人，软信息筛选更为重要。
This paper examines the performance of new online lending markets that rely on nonexpert individuals to screen their peers’ creditworthiness. We find that these peer lenders predict an individual’s likelihood of defaulting on a loan with 45% greater accuracy than the borrower’s exact credit score (unobserved by the lenders, who only see a credit category). Moreover, peer lenders achieve 87% of the predictive power of an econometrician who observes all standard financial information about borrowers. Screening through soft or nonstandard information is relatively more important when evaluating lower-quality borrowers. Our results highlight how aggregating over the views of peers and leveraging nonstandard information can enhance lending efficiency. This paper was accepted by Amit Seru, finance.