Initiative, Incentives, and Soft Information
利用金融机构的组织层级变革数据，研究发现下放权力和减少监督能激励信贷员更努力地生产和运用软信息进行贷款决策，揭示了组织设计对软信息使用的重要性。
This paper examines how organizational form affects incentives inside a financial institution. Using unique organization-level data, I exploit a change to the hierarchical organization to test whether delegation of authority and reduction of oversight improve the provision of effort by loan officers. I find that empowering loan officers increases their effort in producing and using soft information in their lending decisions. Consistent with the incentive view of delegation, loan officers who receive more authority rely more on soft information relative to hard information in their decisions than those for whom authority is only partially or not delegated. The results shed light on the importance of organizational design for the production and use of soft information in financial institutions. This paper was accepted by Amit Seru, finance.