The crisis in international lending: A survey of the practices, views, and concerns of United States bankers.

摘要

Given the severity and depth of the recent banking crises, many researchers and practitioners have wondered why senior managers of so many large commercial banks make major lending blunders when they seem to have had access to the information necessary to make sound credit judgments. Did bankers make rational utility-maximizing choices based on the best information available to them, or did many of them fail to anticipate the major financial crises? Did bankers overlook certain structural characteristics of international lending that made international lending susceptible to a financial crisis? More specifically did psychological and information-processing errors by bankers bias international lending decisions?; Early studies of bankers' habits were based on the assumption that individuals were rational. Rational choice models assume that decision makers are guided by innate cognitive mechanisms that lead them to make optimal choices. Debates regarding deviations from the maxims of economic rationality point out its limitations (Kahneman and Riepe 1998).; Augmentations to the rational model suggested by psychological and information processing approaches form the argument developed in this study. Despite widespread concerns regarding the influences of information, incentives, cognition, and motivation on lending decisions, there has been little systematic attention among researchers (although related hypotheses have been examined) that integrates these findings directly into an analysis of the decision-making processes in international lending. I examine the consequences of these oversights resulting from psychological and information processing errors to determine to what degree international lending crises can be explained as a consequence of information and psychological processing errors.; This dissertation addresses these questions by examining a survey of the practices, views and concerns among U.S. bankers. In addition to a formal survey questionnaire, I use elite interviews and statistical analysis as the basis of my studies. Analytical results show that bankers' behavior in lending decisions was affected by informational asymmetries, moral hazard, incentive structures, and herding behavior. Given these results, I argue that understanding the consequences of psychological and information processing errors can play a useful role in identifying sources of vulnerability and instability in the financial system.