We investigate how well social collateral does as an alternative to traditional physical collateral. We do so by studying cosigned loans - a borrower´s loan is backed by the personal guarantee of a cosigner. We use a regression discontinuity approach with data from South Indian bidding Roscas. Our main finding is that cosigners do indeed provide social collateral: doubling the number of cosigners halves the probability of arrears for high risk borrowers. We then distinguish between different theories of social collateral. Cosigners may be e¤ective as a monitoring device (a borrower would pay to rid herself of the nuisance of a cosigner) or as an insurance device (a borrower would pay for the benefit of a cosigner). We show that these two interpretations of cosigning have different empirical predictions in the context of a bidding Roscas. We find support for the insurance role of cosigners.
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Find related papers by JEL classification: G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Mortgages O16 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Financial Markets; Saving and Capital Investment D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Dean S. Karlan, 2005.
"Social Connections and Group Banking,"
Working Papers
181, Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Research Program in Development Studies..
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