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Interest Rates and Information
Author(s) -
Colombo Ferdinando
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
the manchester school
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.361
H-Index - 42
eISSN - 1467-9957
pISSN - 1463-6786
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9957.2004.00414.x
Subject(s) - monopolistic competition , adverse selection , interest rate , economics , debt , monetary economics , competition (biology) , microeconomics , quality (philosophy) , value (mathematics) , finance , computer science , monopoly , ecology , philosophy , epistemology , machine learning , biology
In a lending relationship, a bank learns information on its borrowers. Adverse selection makes the usefulness and value of this information depend on the interest rates the bank charges in the different periods. The optimal intertemporal screening of borrowers calls for a monopolistic bank to smooth interest rates. In a repeated relationship, interest rates are lower than in a one‐period setting; furthermore, they are less volatile and the quality of the loans is higher than under competition (with symmetric information). Information sharing may reduce both the probability that a debt will be paid and the sum of banks’ and borrowers’ profits.