Credit-Worthiness Tests and Interbank Competition
分析银行使用不完美且独立的测试评估借款人信用，银行通过宣布利率竞争，发现银行数量增加会降低平均信用质量，且银行有动机降低利率以改善客户信用质量。
This paper analyzes a competitive credit market where banks use imperfect and independent tests to assess the ability of a potential creditor to repay credit. The banks compete by announcing interest rates at which they will provide credit to those applicants who pass the banks' tests. The proportion of applicants who pass the test of at least one bank increases with the number of banks providing credit, so the average credit-worthiness decreases. It is then shown that in a situation where all banks charge the same interest rate, a bank always has the incentive to undercut in order to improve the average credit-worthiness of its own clientele. This feature represents the major difference from the situations in standard Bertrand and Bertrand-Edgeworth models. Copyright 1990 by The Econometric Society.