Doctoral Dissertation Research: Discretion and Decision-making in Microlending

本项目调查小额贷款机构信贷员和申请人的职责特征如何影响通过名义上中立、标准化风险评估实践做出的信贷决策。在贫困程度高的地方，小额贷款机构向非传统借款人发放小额贷款，使用的标准比常规银行更宽松。政策分析人士和捐助组织将小额信贷描述为解决贫困问题的包容性解决方案。然而，首先决定批准或拒绝哪些申请人的信贷员的作用经常被忽视。本研究考察了归属特征对这一决定的影响，从而考察了归属特征对谁获得贷款以及以何种条件获得贷款的潜在影响。这个项目的研究问题是：(1)信贷员如何确定申请人的信誉，这种评估如何受到他们对归属特征的价值观的影响？(2)风险评估的标准化如何影响信贷员自由裁量权的行使和信贷分配过程？这些问题是通过在重大机构转型过程中收集的定性和定量数据来解决的，包括行政数据、访谈、人种学观察和书面文本。这些数据的收集可以通过与小额信贷提供者联系来实现。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project investigates how, at microlenders, an ascriptive characteristic of loan officers and applicants may affect credit decisions that are made through nominally neutral, standardized risk assessment practices. In places with high poverty levels, microlenders make small loans to nontraditional borrowers using more forgiving criteria than regular banks. Policy analysts and donor organizations have portrayed microcredit as an inclusive solution to poverty. The role of loan officers, however, who decide which applicants are approved or rejected in the first place, often is overlooked. This study examines the effect of an ascriptive characteristic on this decision and thus its potentially consequential effects on who gets loans and on what terms.Research questions for this project are: (1) How do loan officers determine creditworthiness among applicants, and how is this evaluation affected by their values on an ascriptive characteristic? (2) How does the standardization of risk assessment affect the exercise of loan officers’ discretion and the process of credit allocation? These questions are addressed with a combination of qualitative and quantitative data collected over the course of a major institutional transformation, including administrative data, interviews, ethnographic observations, and written texts. Collection of these data is made possible through access to a microcredit provider.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.