Judging Borrowers by the Company They Keep: Friendship Networks and Information Asymmetry in Online Peer-to-Peer Lending
研究在线P2P借贷市场，发现借款人的线上友谊能作为信用质量的信号，提高融资成功率、降低利率和违约率，且朋友的角色和身份影响显著。
We study the online market for peer-to-peer (P2P) lending, in which individuals bid on unsecured microloans sought by other individual borrowers. Using a large sample of consummated and failed listings from the largest online P2P lending marketplace, Prosper.com, we find that the online friendships of borrowers act as signals of credit quality. Friendships increase the probability of successful funding, lower interest rates on funded loans, and are associated with lower ex post default rates. The economic effects of friendships show a striking gradation based on the roles and identities of the friends. We discuss the implications of our findings for the disintermediation of financial markets and the design of decentralized electronic markets. This paper was accepted by Sandra Slaughter, information systems.