Collateral Vs. Project Screening: A Model of Lazy Banks

• Michael Manove ^[1] ; A. Jorge Padilla ^[2] ; Marco Pagano ^[3]
  1. [1] Boston University

     Boston University

     City of Boston, Estados Unidos

     
  2. [2] Centro de Estudios Monetarios y Financieros

     Centro de Estudios Monetarios y Financieros

     Madrid, España

     
  3. [3] Universitá di Salerno

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• Localización: Documentos de Trabajo ( CEMFI ), Nº. 7 (Working Paper No. 9807, December 1998), 1998
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Many economists argue that the primary economic function of banks is to provide cheap credit, and to facilitate this function, they advocate the strict protection and enforcement of creditor rights. But banks can serve another important economic function: through project screening they can reduce the number of project failures and thus mitigate their private and social costs. Strict protection of creditor rights would leave the tradeoff between these two banking functions to the market. In this paper, we show that because of market imperfections in the banking industry, strong creditor protection may lead to market equilibria in which cheap credit is inappropriately emphasized over project screening. Restrictions on collateral requirements and the protection of debtors in bankruptcy proceedings may redress this imbalance and increase credit-market efficiency.