Why does regional information matter? evidence from peer-to-peer lending

Tong Wang*, Sheng Zhao, Xin Shen

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

10 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

In this paper, we study regional discrimination in a peer-to-peer lending scenario and provide novel empirical evidence for theories of soft information collection and information cost. We find that the regional information matters for borrowers' funding probabilities and that discrimination is profit-oriented or taste-oriented depending on the specific region. Moreover, using borrowers' birthplace as an instrumental variable, we find no evidence of genuine discrimination based purely on region in the peer-to-peer lending market.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)346-366
Number of pages21
JournalEuropean Journal of Finance
Volume27
Issue number4-5
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2021

Keywords

  • Peer-to-peer lending
  • information cost theory
  • regional discrimination

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