Cars Adams ct al. (2007} studied moral hazard and adverse selection Using loan information from a large automobile sales company that specialize in the subprime market. Nearly a third of their loan applicants have neither a checking nor a savings account. The average person finances 90% of the price of the automobile, and the average loan is around $11,000Adams ct al. presented two types of evidence that many of these households have trouble borrowing. First, they found that the availability of funds greatly affects demand for cars. For example, the quantity demanded is 50% higher dur mg tax rebate season than at other times of the year.Second, the demand for cars is highly sensitive to minimum down-payment requirements. An increase in the required down payment by Si00 reduces the quantity demanded by 7%. This effect is large in the sense that car prices would have to rise nearly $1,000 to reduce the quantity demanded by that much.This market has both moral hazard and adverse selection problems. The larger the loan, the more likely borrowers are to default—fail to repay the loan—because they do not bear the full cost of defaulting. Adams er al. find that a $1,000 increase in loan size increases the default rate by over 16%. Consequently, lenders want ro cap rhe size of the loans to prevent overborrowing.Adverse selection occurs because people who have a high risk of defaulting arc more likely to apply for loans. The firm assigns buyers to a small number of credit categories based on their credit history and income. Adams et al. estimate that, all else the same, a buyer in the worst category wants to borrow $200 more than a buyer in the best category and is more than twice as likely to default for the same size loan. To avoid this problem, lenders use loan caps: The riskiest borrowers get smaller loans than others because they arc required to make larger down pay¬ments. Within a given risk group, a buyer who pays an extra $1,000 down for unobservable reasons is 8% less likely to default than one who docs not, given identical cars and loan liabilities.Despite these actions by the firm, more than half of their customers default. Because of the high probability of default, the auto loan firm charges very high annual interest rates of 25% to 30%.
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