Doctoral Dissertation Research: Discretion and Decision-making in Microlending

博士论文研究：小额贷款中的自由裁量权和决策

• 批准号: 2001628
• 负责人: Andrew Schrank
• 金额: $ 1.59万
• 依托单位: Brown University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-05-01 至 2022-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2001628&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Discretion; Decision

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.

本项目调查在小额贷款机构，信贷官员和申请人的归属特征如何影响通过名义上中立的标准化风险评估做法作出的信贷决定。 在贫困程度较高的地方，小额贷款机构向非传统借款人发放小额贷款，其标准比普通银行更为宽松。 政策分析家和捐助组织将小额信贷描述为一种包容性的解决贫穷办法。 然而，贷款官员的作用，谁决定哪些申请人被批准或拒绝摆在首位，往往被忽视。 本研究探讨了归因特征对这一决策的影响，从而对谁获得贷款和以何种条件获得贷款产生了潜在的后果性影响。本项目的研究问题是：（1）信贷人员如何确定申请人的信誉，以及这种评估如何受到他们对归因特征的价值观的影响？(2)风险评估的标准化对信贷员自由裁量权的行使和信贷分配的过程有何影响？ 这些问题的解决与定性和定量数据相结合的过程中收集的一个重大的体制改革，包括行政数据，访谈，人种学的意见，和书面文本。 该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得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来支持。