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American Economic Association
Credit Rationing in Markets with Imperfect Information
Author(s): Joseph E. Stiglitz and Andrew Weiss
Source:
The American Economic Review,
Vol. 71, No. 3 (Jun., 1981), pp. 393-410
Published by: American Economic Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1802787 .
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Credit
Rationing
in
Markets
with
Imperfect
Information
By
JOSEPH
E. STIGLITZ
AND ANDREW WEISS*
Why is
credit
rationed?
Perhaps the
most
basic tenet
of economics
is that
market equi-
librium
entails
supply
equalling
demand;
that
if demand
should
exceed
supply,
prices
will
rise, decreasing
demand
and/or
increasing
supply
until
demand
and
supply
are
equated
at the
new
equilibrium
price.
So if prices
do
their job,
rationing
should not
exist.
How-
ever,
credit rationing
and
unemployment
do
in fact exist.
They seem
to
imply an
excess
demand
for
loanable funds
or an excess
supply
of workers.
One method
of
"explaining"
these
condi-
tions
associates them
with short-
or long-term
disequilibrium.
In the short term they
are
viewed
as
temporary
disequilibrium
phenom-
ena; that
is, the
economy
has incurred
an
exogenous
shock,
and
for
reasons
not fully
explained,
there
is some stickiness
in
the
prices
of
labor
or capital
(wages
and
interest
rates)
so that there
is
a
transitional
period
during
which
rationing
of
jobs
or credit
oc-
curs.
On
the
other
hand,
long-term
un-
employment
(above
some "natural
rate")
or
credit
rationing
is
explained
by governmen-
tal
constraints such
as
usury
laws or
mini-
mum
wage
legislation.'
The object
of this paper
is
to show
that
in
equilibrium
a loan
market
may
be char-
acterized
by
credit
rationing.
Banks making
loans
are concerned about
the interest
rate
they receive
on the loan,
and the riskiness
of
the
loan.
However,
the
interest rate
a bank
charges
may itself
affect the
riskiness of the
pool of
loans by
either: 1) sorting
potential
borrowers
(the
adverse selection
effect);
or
2)
affecting
the actions of
borrowers (the
incen-
tive effect).
Both effects derive directly
from
the
residual
imperfect
information
which
is
present
in loan markets
after banks
have
evaluated
loan applications.
When
the price
(interest
rate) affects the
nature of
the trans-
action,
it
may not
also clear
the
market.
The adverse
selection
aspect
of
interest
rates is a
consequence
of different
borrowers
having different
probabilities
of
repaying
their
loan.
The
expected
return to the bank
obviously
depends on
the probability
of re-
payment,
so the bank
would
like
to
be able
to identify
borrowers who are more likely to
repay. It
is difficult to
identify
"good bor-
rowers,"
and to do so
requires the
bank to
use
a
variety
of
screening
devices.
The
inter-
est
rate
which an individual
is
willing to pay
may
act as one such screening
device: those
who are
willing to pay
high interest
rates
may,
on
average,
be worse risks;
they
are
willing to
borrow at
high interest
rates be-
cause they perceive
their
probability
of
re-
paying
the
loan
to
be low.
As
the interest
rate rises,
the average
"riskiness"
of those
who borrow increases,
possibly lowering
the
bank's
profits.
Similarly,
as the interest rate
and other
terms of the contract change,
the
behavior of
the borrower
is
likely
to
change.
For
in-
stance,
raising the
interest rate decreases
the
return
on projects
which succeed.
We
will
show
that higher interest
rates
induce firms
to undertake
projects
with
lower
probabili-
ties
of
success but
higher payoffs
when suc-
cessful.
In a
world with
perfect
and costless
infor-
mation,
the
bank would
stipulate
precisely
all
the
actions
which
the
borrower
could
*Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc. and Princeton
University, and
Bell
Laboratories, Inc., respectively.
We
would like to thank Bruce Greenwald, Henry Landau,
Rob Porter, and Andy Postlewaite for fruitful comments
and suggestions. Financial support
from the National
Science
Foundation is
gratefully acknowledged.
An
earlier version of this
paper
was
presented
at the
spring
1977 meetings of the Mathematics
in
the Social Sciences
Board
in
Squam Lake, New Hampshire.
'Indeed,
even if markets were not competitive one
would not expect to find rationing; profit maximization
would, for instance, lead a monopolistic bank to raise
the interest rate it
charges
on loans to the
point
where
excess demand for loans was eliminated.
393
This content downloaded from 173.219.185.130 on Tue, 9 Sep 2014 11:54:41 AM
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394
THE
AMERICAN
ECONOMIC
REVIEW
JUNE
1981
z
m
1Z
w
I- /
0
a-
2
@ -
w
w
w
r
INTEREST
RATE
FIGURE
1.
THERE EXISTS
AN
INTEREST
RATE
WHICH
MAXIMIZES
THE
EXPECTED RETURN TO THE
BANK
undertake
(which might
affect the
return
to
the
loan). However,
the
bank is
not able to
directly
control
all the
actions of the bor-
rower; therefore,
it will
formulate the terms
of
the
loan contract
in
a manner
designed
to
induce
the borrower to take actions which
are
in
the interest
of
the
bank,
as
well as to
attract
low-risk
borrowers.
For both
these
reasons, the expected
re-
turn
by
the bank
may
increase
less
rapidly
than
the
interest
rate; and, beyond
a
point,
may actually decrease,
as
depicted
in
Figure
1.
The interest rate at
which the
expected
return to
the
bank
is
maximized, we refer to
as the
"bank-optimal" rate, Pr.
Both the demand
for
loans and the
supply
of funds
are functions of the
interest rate
(the
latter
being
determined
by
the
expected
return
at
r*). Clearly,
it is
conceivable that at
r
the
demand for funds exceeds the
supply
of
funds.
Traditional
analysis
would
argue
that,
in
the
presence
of an
excess demand for
loans,
unsatisfied borrowers
would
offer
to
pay
a
higher
interest rate
to the
bank,
bid-
ding up
the interest rate until
demand
equals
supply.
But
although supply
does not
equal
demand at
r*,
it
is
the
equilibrium
interest
rate! The
bank
would not
lend
to
an
individ-
ual who
offered
to
pay
more
than
r*.
In
the
bank's
judgment,
such a loan
is
likely
to be a
worse
risk
than the
average
loan
at
interest
rate
P*,
and the
expected
return to a
loan at
an interest rate
above
r*
is
actually
lower
than
the
expected return to the loans the
bank
is presently making. Hence, there are
no competitive
forces leading supply to equal
demand, and
credit is rationed.
But the
interest rate
is
not the only term of
the contract
which
is
important.
The
amount
of the loan,
and the amount of collateral or
equity the bank demands of loan
applicants,
will also affect
both the behavior of bor-
rowers and
the
distribution
of
borrowers. In
Section III,
we
show that
increasing
the
col-
lateral requirements
of lenders
(beyond some
point) may
decrease the
returns
to the
bank,
by
either
decreasing
the
average degree of
risk
aversion of
the pool
of
borrowers;
or in
a
multiperiod
model inducing
individual in-
vestors to
undertake riskier projects.
Consequently,
it may
not be
profitable to
raise
the interest
rate
or
collateral require-
ments when a
bank has an excess demand
for
credit;
instead,
banks
deny
loans to bor-
rowers
who are
observationally indis-
tinguishable from
those who receive loans.2
It is not our
argument that credit rationing
will always
characterize capital markets, but
rather that it
may occur
under
not implausi-
ble
assumptions concerning borrower and
lender behavior.
This
paper
thus
provides
the first
theoret-
ical justification
of
true
credit
rationing.
Pre-
vious studies have
sought
to
explain why
each individual
faces
an
upward sloping
in-
terest
rate
schedule.
The
explanations
offered
are
(a)
the
probability
of default
for
any
particular
borrower
increases as
the amount
borrowed
increases
(see Stiglitz 1970, 1972;
Marshall Freimer
and
Myron Gordon;
Dwight Jaffee;
George Stigler),
or
(b)
the
mix of borrowers
changes adversely (see
Jaffee and Thomas
Russell).
In these circum-
stances
we
would
not
expect
loans of differ-
ent
size
to
pay
the same interest
rate, any
more
than we
would
expect
two
borrowers,
one of whom has a
reputation
for
prudence
and
the other a
reputation
as a bad
credit
risk, to be able
to
borrow
at
the same interest
rate.
We
reserve the
term credit
rationing
for
circumstances
in which either
(a) among
loan
applicants
who
appear
to be identical some
2After
this
paper
was
completed,
our attention
was
drawn
to
W.
Keeton's
book. In
chapter
3 he
develops
an
incentive
argument
for
credit
rationing.
This content downloaded from 173.219.185.130 on Tue, 9 Sep 2014 11:54:41 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
VOL.
71
NO.
3
STIGLITZ
AND
WEISS:
CREDIT
RATIONING
395
receive a
loan
and
others
do
not,
and
the
rejected
applicants
would
not
receive a
loan
even if
they
offered to
pay
a
higher
interest
rate;
or
(b) there are
identifiable
groups of
individuals in the
population
who, with
a
given
supply
of
credit, are
unable
to
obtain
loans
at
any interest
rate,
even
though with
a
larger
supply of
credit,
they
would.3
In
our construction of
an
equilibrium
model
with
credit
rationing,
we
describe a
market
equilibrium
in
which
there
are
many
banks and
many
potential
borrowers. Both
borrowers and banks seek
to
maximize
prof-
its,
the
former
through
their
choice of
a
project,
the
latter
through
the
interest
rate
they
charge
borrowers
and the
collateral
they
require
of
borrowers
(the
interest
rate
re-
ceived
by
depositors
is
determined
by
the
zero-profit
condition).
Obviously, we
are
not
discussing
a
"price-taking"
equilibrium.
Our
equilibrium
notion
is
competitive
in
that
banks
compete;
one
means
by
which
they
compete is
by
their
choice of
a
price
(interest
rate) which
maximizes their
profits.
The
reader
should notice
that in
the
model
pre-
sented
below
there are
interest
rates
at
which
the
demand
for loanable
funds
equals
the
supply
of
loanable funds.
However,
these are
not,
in
general,
equilibrium
interest
rates.
If,
at
those
interest
rates,
banks could
increase
their
profits
by
lowering
the
interest
rate
charged
borrowers,
they
would
do
so.
Although
these results are
presented
in
the
context
of
credit
markets,
we
show in
Section
V
that
they
are
applicable to
a
wide
class
of
principal-agent
problems
(including
those
describing
the
landlord-tenant
or
employer-
employee
relationship).
I.
Interest Rate
as
a
Screening
Device
In
this
section
we
focus
on
the
role of
interest
rates
as
screening
devices
for
dis-
tinguishing between
good
and
bad
risks.
We
assume
that
the bank has
identified a
group
of
projects;
for
each
project
6
there is
a
probability
distribution
of
(gross)
returns
R.
We
assume
for
the
moment
that
this
distri-
bution
cannot
be
altered
by
the
borrower.
Different
firms
have
different
probability
distributions of
returns.
We
initially
assume
that- the
bank is
able
to
distinguish
projects
with
different
mean
returns,
so we will
at
first
confine
ourselves
to
the
decision
prob-
lem
of
a
bank
facing
projects
having
the
same
mean
return.
However,
the
bank can-
not
ascertain
the
riskiness of
a
project. For
simplicity, we
write
the distribution
of re-
turns4
as
F(R,
0) and the
density
function
as
f(R, 0),
and we
assume
that
greater
6
corre-
sponds
to
greater
risk
in
the
sense
of
mean
preserving
spreads5
(see
Rothschild-Stiglitz),
i.e., for
,
>2,Jif
00
0
(1)
fRf(R,
01)
dR=
Rf(R,
2)
dR
then for
y
O,
(2)
j
F(R,01)dR>
jF(R,02)dR
If
the
individual
borrows the
amount
B,
and
the
interst
rate
is r,
then we
say
the individ-
ual
defaults
on
his
loan
if
the return
R
plus
the
collateral
C
is
insufficient to
pay
back
the
promised
amount,6
i.e.,
if
(3)
C+R<B(I +P)
3There is
another form
of
rationing
which
is
the
subject
of
our
1980
paper:
banks
make
the
provision of
credit
in
later
periods
contingent
on
performance
in
earlier
period;
banks
may
then
refuse
to
lend
even
when
these
later
period
projects
stochastically
dominate
earlier
projects
which
are
financed.
4These
are
subjective
probability
distributions;
the
perceptions
on
the
part
of
the
bank
may
differ
from
those of
the
firm.
5Michael
Rothschild
and
Stiglitz
show
that
condi-
tions
(I)
and
(2)
imply
that
project
2
has
a
greater
variance
than
project
1,
although
the
converse is
not
true.
That
is,
the
mean
preserving
spread
criterion for
measuring
risk
is
stronger
than
the
increasing
variance
criterion.
They
also
show
that
(I)
and
(2)
can
be
in-
terpreted
equally
well
as:
given
two
projects
with
equal
means,
every
risk
averter
prefers
project
I
to
project 2.
6This
is
not
the
only
possible
definition.
A
firm
might
be
said
to
be
in
default if
R
<
B(1
+
P).
Nothing
critical
depends
on
the
precise
definition. We
assume,
however, that if
the
firm
defaults,
the
bank has
first
claim
on
R+
C.
The
analysis
may
easily be
generalized
to
include
bankruptcy
costs.
However,
to
simplify
the
analysis, we
usually
shall
ignore
these
costs.
Throughout
this
section we
assume
that
the
project
is the
sole
project
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