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Emergence of Captive Finance Companies and Risk Segmentation in Loan Markets: Theory and Evidence
Author(s) -
BARRON JOHN M.,
CHONG BYUNGUK,
STATEN MICHAEL E.
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
journal of money, credit and banking
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.763
H-Index - 108
eISSN - 1538-4616
pISSN - 0022-2879
DOI - 10.1111/j.1538-4616.2008.00108.x
Subject(s) - loan , finance , economic rent , context (archaeology) , business , predictive power , product (mathematics) , economics , microeconomics , paleontology , philosophy , geometry , mathematics , epistemology , biology
A seller with some degree of market power in its product market can earn rents. In this context, there is a gain to granting credit to purchase of the product and thus to the establishment of a captive finance company. This paper examines the optimal behavior of such a durable good seller and its captive finance company. The model predicts a critical difference between the captive finance company's credit standard and that of independent lenders (“banks”), namely, that the captive finance company will adopt a more lenient credit standard. Thus, we should expect the likelihood of repayment of a captive loan to be lower than that of a bank loan, other things equal. This prediction is tested using a unique data set drawn from a major credit bureau in the United States, and the evidence supports the theoretical prediction.