Soft Collateral, Bank Lending, and the Optimal Credit Registry
研究在一般均衡稳态下如何设计最优信用登记系统，借款人可策略性违约，未来信贷准入作为软抵押来强制执行贷款偿还。分析了资金充足与不足时的最优信用严格度，并比较了不同层级登记系统的效果。
We study the design of an optimal credit registry in a general equilibrium steady-state setting where borrowers can default strategically and future access to credit markets serves as soft collateral to enforce loan repayment. We endogenize the probabilities for exclusion after default and subsequent reinstatement of clean credit records. When there are sufficient funds, optimal credit stringency is as loose as possible, subject to borrowers’ incentive constraints. When there are insufficient funds, credit stringency is driven by the need to equilibrate nonexcluded borrowers with available funds, and it increases as the imbalance grows. We examine how population growth, mortality, and persistence affect our results. Finally, we compare the simple two-tier scheme with the three-tier scheme and characterize solutions to a general N-tier registry. We show that a more graduated registry is not necessarily a better one. This paper was accepted by Will Cong, finance.