Social Connections and Group Banking
利用秘鲁FINCA项目数据，发现小组贷款中成员间社会联系（如居住邻近或文化相似）能提高还款率和储蓄，并观察到违约后关系恶化和有效监督的证据。
Lending to the poor is expensive due to high screening, monitoring and enforcement costs. Group lending advocates believe lenders overcome this by harnessing social connections. Using data from FINCA-Peru, I exploit a quasi-random group formation process to find evidence of peers successfully monitoring and enforcing joint-liability loans. Individuals with stronger social connections to their fellow group members (i.e., either living closer or being of a similar culture) have higher repayment and higher savings. Furthermore, I observe direct evidence that relationships deteriorate after default, and that through successful monitoring, individuals know who to punish and who not to punish after default. Copyright 2007 The Author(s). Journal compilation Royal Economic Society 2007.