Can Social Cohesion be Harnessed to Repair Market Failures? Evidence from Group Lending in Guatemala
利用危地马拉小组贷款数据，检验了同伴监督、群体压力和社会关系对贷款表现的影响，发现同伴监督通过促进组内保险显著提升绩效，而群体压力对道德风险的抑制效果较小，社会关系的影响不显著。
The success of group lending in developing countries has been attributed to the ability of the institution to mitigate asymmetric information problems in credit markets. Previous research has offered a number of explanations for this phenomenon: social ties between borrowing group members, internal group pressure to repay loans, and peer monitoring. This research presents empirical tests on borrowing group data from Guatemala which indicate that peer monitoring significantly effects borrowing group performance through stimulating intra‐group insurance. Group pressure is found to have a small effect in deterring moral hazard, while the effect of social ties among members is statistically insignificant.