Information Acquisition Under Uncertainty in Credit Markets
研究竞争性信贷市场中银行通过投资改进风险评估技术来获取信息的行为，分析技术的筛选能力对激励和均衡信息外部性的影响，并探讨技术质量不确定性如何影响信息获取激励。
This article studies information acquisition through investment in improved risk assessment technology in competitive credit markets. A technology has two attributes: its ability to screen in productive borrowers, and its ability to screen out unproductive borrowers. The two attributes have fundamentally different effects on acquisition incentives and the structure of equilibrium informational externalities between lenders. The article also studies how uncertainty associated with the quality of superior technology affects information acquisition incentives. Uncertainty influences information acquisition even with risk-neutral banks. Increased uncertainty may raise or dampen incentives, depending on whether uncertainty is, respectively, about screening out or screening in quality. Copyright 2005, Oxford University Press.