Information asymmetry in relationship versus transactional debt markets: Evidence from peer-to-peer lending

This paper uses a unique new data source, online social lending (a.k.a. peer-to-peer lending), to help answer the question of what impact borrower-lender information asymmetries have on adverse selection and moral hazard. This data source has characteristics that allow analysis of the public versus private debt choice without some of the endogeneity issues that are present when using other data sources. Each loan contains detailed bidding information from both public and private investors. Thus, a clean distinction can be drawn between public and private debt without the potential problem of unobserved borrower risk characteristics. The results support the idea that the hold-up problem is more severe with private lenders than public lenders, and that personal relationships mitigate the moral hazard problem