Interest Rate Restrictions in a Natural Experiment: Loan Allocation and the Change in the Usury Laws in 1714
نویسنده
چکیده
This paper studies the effects of interest rate restrictions on loan allocation. In 1714, the British government tightened the usury laws, reducing the maximum permissible interest rate from 6 to 5 percent. A sample of individual loan transactions from a goldsmith bank allows us to examine how interest rate restrictions affected loan allocation. Average loan size and minimum loan size increased strongly. Access to credit for those of noble origin improved, while it worsened for those with less “social capital”. Collateralized credits, which had accounted for a declining share of total lending, returned to their former role of prominence. While we have no direct evidence that loans were misallocated, the discontinuity in loan receipts makes this likely. Our results suggest that the usury laws distorted credit markets substantially. We find no evidence that they offered a form of Pareto-improving social insurance.
منابع مشابه
Loan Contracting in the Presence of Usury Limits: Evidence from Auto Lending
We study the effects of usury limits on the market for auto loans and find little evidence of credit rationing. We show instead that loan contracting and the organization of the loan market adjust to facilitate loans to risky borrowers. When usury restrictions bind, auto dealers finance their customers’ purchases and raise the vehicle sales price (and loan amount) relative to the value of the u...
متن کاملGovernment Banking and Economic Growth in Iran
One of the measures taken by the 1979 Revolutionary Government of Iran was to denounce the mixed public-private ownership of the banking system of the pre-revolutionary era and implement a full scale banking nationalization and merging scheme. Since then the banking system has been operating under close supervision and scrutiny of the government - exercising its power to impose a variety of res...
متن کاملA Comparative Study on Capital Formation in the Usury and Non-usury Economic Systems
The rule of ideologies which ban interest or usury which is earned through lending money has led to developing economic systems that differ from conventional economic systems in which ,interest has been entered. The presence of systems not relying on interest, in turn, has questioned the necessary motives in capital establishments through savings. In this paper, while defining the concepts of m...
متن کاملDeterminants of Loan Repayment in Small Scale Enterprises in Developing Countries
This study was conducted with the objective of identifying the major determinants of loan repayment in Small Scale Enterprises (SSEs) with particular reference to SSEs in one of Kenya’s most dynamic informal business hub, Kariobangi Division in Nairobi. In order to achieve this objective, primarily data were collected from 50 randomly selected respondents by using questionnaires. Descriptive st...
متن کاملAn Assessment of Beneficiaries’ Satisfaction of the Management of Loan Contract Components by Farmer Cooperative Societies in Edo State, Nigeria
The study assessed beneficiaries’ satisfaction in the management of loag-contract components by cooperatives involved in the farm credit delivery in Edo State. The objective was to identify the components of the farm loan contract, examine the management strategies and rate the beneficiaries’ satisfaction of such management strategies. This was done by purposively selecting 40 cooperatives invo...
متن کامل