1 option
Cultural Proximity and Loan Outcomes / Raymond Fisman, Daniel Paravisini, Vikrant Vig.
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Fisman, Raymond.
- Series:
- Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w18096.
- NBER working paper series no. w18096
- Language:
- English
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);
- Place of Publication:
- Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2012.
- Summary:
- We present evidence that shared codes, religious beliefs, ethnicity - cultural proximity - between lenders and borrowers improves the efficiency of credit allocation. We identify in-group preferential treatment using dyadic data on the religion and caste of bank officers and borrowers from a bank in India, and a rotation policy that induces exogenous matching between officers and borrowers. Cultural proximity increases lending on both intensive and extensive margins and improves repayment performance, even after the in-group officer is replaced by an out-group one. Further, cultural proximity increases loan dispersion and reduces loan to collateral ratios. Our results imply that cultural proximity mitigates informational problems that adversely affect lending, which in turn relaxes financial constraints and improves access to finance.
- Notes:
- Print version record
- May 2012.
The Penn Libraries is committed to describing library materials using current, accurate, and responsible language. If you discover outdated or inaccurate language, please fill out this feedback form to report it and suggest alternative language.