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Lending with costly enforcement of repayment and potential fraud

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  • Eaton, Jonathan

Abstract

If contracts are costlessly enforcible then insolvency is the only reason for nonrepayment of loans. While some models have examined the borrower's incentive to repay, it has typically been assumed that the penalty suffered by a debtor in default is imposed automatically and without cost to the lender. If in fact invoking a penalty is costly, Pareto-improving loans may be dynamically inconsistent not because of the absence of a sufficiently harsh penalty for default, but because the lender has no incentive actually to implement the penalty in the event of default. In such situations infinitely-lived institutions can emerge as banking intermediaries between lenders and borrowers. These institutions, repeatedly involved in lending, have an incentive to enforce contracts that individual lenders lack. They can consequently sustain more lending. For their reputations as enforcers of contracts to have value requires that banks earn strictly positive profits. Maintaining the value of bank equity also provides an incentive for bankowners to invest deposits rather than to use these funds fraudulently. Because of the supernormal profits that banks must earn, an equilibrium that is sustained by bank reputation will not replicate an equilibrium in which loan repayment is automatically guaranteed.
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  • Eaton, Jonathan, 1986. "Lending with costly enforcement of repayment and potential fraud," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 281-293, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:jbfina:v:10:y:1986:i:2:p:281-293
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    Cited by:

    1. Laurence J. Kotlikoff & Torsten Persson & Lars E.O. Svensson, 1986. "Laws as Assets: A Possible Solution to the Time Consistency Problem," NBER Working Papers 2068, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Jonathan Eaton & Mark Gersovitz & Joseph E. Stiglitz, 1991. "The Pure Theory of Country Risk," NBER Chapters, in: International Volatility and Economic Growth: The First Ten Years of The International Seminar on Macroeconomics, pages 391-435, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Joseph E. Stiglitz, 2015. "Towards a General Theory of Deep Downturns," NBER Working Papers 21444, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Joshua Aizenman, 1987. "Country Risk and Contingencies," NBER Working Papers 2236, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Diarmid Weir, 2013. "Fiat Money, Individual Rationality and Production," Metroeconomica, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 64(4), pages 573-590, November.
    6. Joshua Aizenman, 1986. "Country Risk and Incentives Schemes," NBER Working Papers 2031, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Bruce C. Greenwald & Joseph E. Stiglitz, 1991. "Information, Finance, and Markets: The Architecture of Allocative Mechanisms," NBER Working Papers 3652, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Joshua Aizenman, 1986. "Country Risk, Asymmetric Information and Domestic Policies," NBER Working Papers 1880, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

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