Costly State Verification with Varying Risk Preferences and Liability
研究贷款合同中，债务人风险偏好和债权人责任如何影响最优还款结构，发现风险厌恶债务人会在低收益时主动披露真实状态，导致消费出现向下跳跃。
Abstract. In the scenario of loan contracts with costly state verification, we examine how the properties of the set of states, different risk preferences of debtors and varying liability of lenders affect the structure of optimal repayments. In particular, we show that with risk-averse debtors, a general set of states, a constant observation cost and both unlimited and limited lender liability, the debtor is strictly better off revealing the true state of nature when his realized revenue is low, which implies that optimal debtor consumption has a downward jump around the single switch from observed to unobserved states. If the debtor can destroy revenue or if the debtor is risk neutral, this non-monotonicity of consumption disappears. Moreover, given the loan size, there is more monitoring under debtor-risk aversion than risk neutrality. We present simulations showing that a contract with unlimited lender liability and debtor-risk aversion has a higher expected observation cost but a lower variance of consumption than a contract with limited lender liability. Finally, we discuss the problems of commitment to verification and contract renegotiation in this framework.