collateral in credit rationing in markets with imperfect information note in their 1981 article joseph stiglitz and andrew weiss analyze adverse selection and incentive effects in the loan market the models considered are based on two crucial assumptions borrowers are subject to limited liability and lenders cannot distinguish borrowers projects of different risk stiglitz and weiss show that a bank that raises its interest rate may suffer adverse selection because only risky borrowers will be willing to borrow at the higher rate thus lenders may choose not to raise the interest rate to eliminate excess demand resulting in the possibility of a credit rationing equilibrium stiglitz and weiss also consider briefly the role of collateral in such credit rationing models they conclude that lenders may choose not to use collateral requirements as a rationing device an increase in collateral requirements like an increase in the interest rate potentially leads to a decrease in the lender s expected return on loans because of resulting adverse incentive and selection effects the purpose of this note is to further investigate the role of collateral in these models stiglitz and weiss discussion in section iii establishes that adverse selection effects can result from increases in collateral when borrowers are risk averse i will show by returning to a model they discussed earlier in section i that the adverse selection effects can also occur when borrowers are risk neutral stiglitz and weiss outline a model to consider the use of collateral as a rationing device section iii in that model all potential borrowers face the same array of risky projects each potential borrower chooses at most one of those projects to undertake the individuals are by assumption risk averse with decreasing absolute risk aversion and possess different amounts of initial wealth thus choice of project if any to undertake and the method of finance selffinance from initial wealth or loan finance will differ from one individual to the next stiglitz and weiss show that among those who undertake risky projects and who choose borrowing as the method of finance wealthier individuals undertake riskier projects an increase in collateral has two effects on the market for loans those individuals who remain in the market will choose to undertake less risky projects and those individuals who drop out of the market are less wealthy low risk borrowers if the second effect is sufficiently strong then increased collateral requirements will mean decreased expected returns for the lender thus a credit rationing equilibrium may occur since lenders may not choose to use collateral requirements or the interest rate to eliminate excess demand the adverse selection effect just described does not occur in this model if the individuals are risk neutral consequently the potential for a credit rationing equilibrium is limited to cases where borrowers are risk averse to see that increases in collateral requirements can also result in adverse selection if borrowers are risk neutral consider the model stiglitz and weiss used to analyze the adverse selection effects of increases in the interest rate section i pp 395 99 it differs from the section iii model discussed above in three ways first borrowers are risk neutral second all projects ar loan financed the analogy to the section iii model is that no individuals have sufficient wealth to self finance projects third in the section

discount rates and credit markets theory and evidence from rural india three models of credit markets 1 the permanent income model 2 upward sloping credit supply to individual borrowers and 3 constrained credit due to imperfect enforcement are tested using credit market data and an experimental study of individuals discount rates in south india the permanent income model is rejected by both the discount rate and the credit market data the discount rate data are consistent with either of the other two models while the credit market data are consistent with a combination of these two models other explanations are found to be insufficient to explain the results of this study

delegated portfolio management abstract a problem of screening agents with privately known forecasting abilities and reservation utilities and then eliciting truthful information from these agents once they are employed is considered for the case of risk averse agents and large principals an approximately optimal solution is constructively characterized under the assumption that payoffs are normally distributed a significant extension of the definnetti savage probability elicitation result is developed under this extension knowledge of agent preferences is not required when the underlying conditional distributions are symmetric and this fact is exploited to solve the screening problem in a mean variance formulation

self fulfilling fire sales fragility of collateralised short term debt markets this paper shows that collateralised short term debt although privately optimal for reducing borrowers moral hazard can cause fragility multiple equilibria when the collateral market is illiquid a new form of coordination failure between borrowers ex ante margin and risk taking decisions engenders a systemic run in the collateralised debt market large changes in credit rationing margins repo spreads etc the model also captures the large small crosssectional differences between safe and risky collateral in bad good times finally i show that asset price guarantees could improve welfare and promote stability but repealing repo contracts automatic stay exemption might do the opposite

application of nonlinear mapping theory to commodity price fluctuatuions abstract the cobweb model of price stability with lagged price elasticities is extended to include nonlinear terms the result falls within nonlinear mapping models such as the logistics map nonlinearities prevent the unbounded oscillation predicted from the unstable linear cobweb but the price time series may exhibit chaotic unpredictable endogenous fluctuations the theory is applied to the u s crude oil market regressing consumption against price gives lagged elasticities greater than current elasticities indicating linear instability this instability is seen in a mapping model of the price time series predictions of the model are given both with and without nonlinear terms indicating large continuing endogenous price fluctuations

quality quantity and spatial variation of price this paper develops and implements a method for estimating price elasticities of demand using cross sectional household survey data geographically clustered households report unit values which when corrected for quality effects and for measurement error indicate the underlying spatial variation in prices and can be matched to variation in demand patterns a simple model of quality choice is proposed while the correction for measurement error exploits the clustered design of such surveys data from a 1979 household survey from the ivory coast are used to estimate price elasticities for beef meat fish cereals and starches copyright 1988 by american economic association

credit markets in northern nigeria credit as insurance in a rural economy this article addresses the issues of imcomplete markets and imperfect information in the context of credit markets in rural northern nigeria in much recent theoretical literature the problems of moral hazard and adverse selection are assumed to be decisive for the organization of agrarian institutions in contrast it is found that in the four villages surveyed credit transactions take advantage of the free flow of information within rural communities information asymmetries between borrower and lender are unimportant and their institutional consequences the use of collateral and interlinked contracts are absent credit transactions play a direct role in pooling risk between households through the use of contracts in which the repayment owed by the borrower depends on the realization of random production shocks by both the borrower and the lender

nominal and true cost of loan collateral abstract this paper explores costs and proceeds from loan collateral in the credit market with ex ante asymmetric information when collateral value and the probability of project success fluctuate a borrower is willing to pledge collateral if i its future value is correlated with the probability of project success or ii its value fluctuates strongly or iii it is funded with loan capital when one of the conditions is satisfied in contrast to bester 1985 a high risk borrower may be more willing to pledge collateral than a low risk borrower the paper is related to topical subprime crises and real estate collateral

the effects of formal and informal contracting in credit availability this paper investigates how the use of collateral formal contracting along with the market power of banks which facilitates relational contracts affects the availability of credit for business firms using loan data from the spanish credit register we show that the average credit quality of borrowers in a provincial market decreases with market concentration and the availability of collateral additionally the marginal effect of each variable decreases with the higher values of the other variable we also find that credit line interest rates increase with the availability of collateral although the increase is lower for banks operating in more concentrated credit markets therefore market power relations and collateral formal contracting act as substitutes to increase the availability of bank finance under asymmetric information

chaotic price behavior in a non linear cobweb model abstract the cobweb model for the evolution of prices is considered with backward bending supply curves and multi valued demand curves these deterministic non linear dynamical systems are shown to exhibit a broad spectrum of complex time behavior including stable periodic cycles of arbitrary order and chaos

collateral loan quality and bank risk abstract most commercial loans are made on a secured basis yet little is known about the relationship between collateral and credit risk several theoretical studies find that when borrowers have private information about risk the lowest risk borrowers tend to pledge collateral in contrast conventional wisdom holds that when risk is observable the highest risk borrowers tend to pledge collateral an additional issue is whether secured loans as opposed to secured borrowers tend to be safer or riskier than unsecured loans empirical evidence presented here strongly suggests that collateral is most often associated with riskier borrowers riskier loans and riskier banks

repossession and the democratization of credit we exploit a 2004 credit reform in brazil that simplified the sale of repossessed cars used as collateral for auto loans we show that the reform expanded credit to riskier self employed borrowers who purchased newer more expensive cars the legal change has led to larger loans with lower spreads and longer maturities although the credit reform improved riskier borrowers access to credit it also led to increased incidences of delinquency and default our results shed light on the consequences of a credit reform and highlight the crucial role that collateral and repossession play in the liberalization and democratization of credit

memory and market stability the case of the cobweb abstract when optimizing agents use their memories in a non linear cobweb model it will be asymptotically stable instability and chaos cannot occur this contrasts with the results when agents are forgetful however short run fluctuations are erratic and sensitive to initial conditions

collateral type of lender and relationship banking as determinants of credit risk abstract this paper analyses the determinants of the probability of default pd of bank loans we focus the discussion on the role of a limited set of variables collateral type of lender and bank borrower relationship while controlling for the other explanatory variables the study uses information on the more than three million loans entered into by spanish credit institutions over a complete business cycle 1988 2000 collected by the bank of spain s credit register central de informacion de riesgos we find that collateralised loans have a higher pd loans granted by savings banks are riskier and finally that a close bank borrower relationship increases the willingness to take more risk

financing difficulties for smes and credit rationing an expanded model of mortgage loans with asymmetric information this article presents a new model of mortgage loans under reasonable assumptions a several key variables that affects the success of a project such as project risk total investment lending rate

secured lending and default risk equilibrium analysis policy implications and empirical results the authors examine collateral in a competitive equilibrium in which borrowers can choose hidden actions and may additionally possess hidden knowledge apart from explaining the widespread use of collateral despite deadweight costs they show that an increase in the riskless interest rate causes equilibrium loan rates and collateral requirements to increase a decline in the deadweight costs of collateral reduces the equilibrium collateral use under moral hazard and an increase in the borrower s project size reduces equilibrium collateral use under moral hazard some of these predictions are tested and found to be supported by the data copyright 1991 by royal economic society

credible commitments contract enforcement problems and banks intermediation as credibility assurance abstract we consider contract enforceability problems in credit transactions and justify a bank as an organizational solution to market breakdown due to unenforceable contracts specifically we explain i why loan commitments exist and ii why banks exist to sell such commitments a loan commitment resolves moral hazard more efficiently than any combination of inside equity and spot credit however the market breaks down if commitment sellers are individuals because their promises to honor contracts are not credible with a large bank a perfect sequential equilibrium is obtained in which credibility is restored

an analysis of the principal agent problem most analyses of the principal agent problem assume that the principal chooses an incentive scheme to maximize expected utility subject to the agent s utility being at a stationary point an important paper of mirrlees has shown that this approach is generally invalid we present an alternative procedure if the agent s preferences over income lotteries are independent of action we show that the optimal way of implementing an action by the agent can be found by solving a convex programming problem we use this to characterize the optimal incentive scheme and to analyze the determinants of the seriousness of an incentive problem

loan collateral corporate investment and business cycle abstract collateral and loan rates are observed to be highly cyclical in their use for bank lending the effects of such cyclicality on corporate investment are analyzed in this paper using a dynamic model we find that more collateral causes firms to select riskier safer projects if the loan rate rises above falls below the expected investment return we show that the incentive effect of loan rates becomes stronger with greater collateral with the two credit terms having larger incentive effects on lower quality firms these results offer a new explanation for why lenient collateral policies are associated with rising loan rates in economic upturns but stricter collateral requirements come with falling loan rates during downturns

non leaky buckets optimal redistributive taxation and agency costs abstract economists generally have argued that income redistribution comes at a cost in aggregate income we provide a counter example in a model where private information gives rise to incentive constraints in the model a wage tax creates the usual distortion in labor leisure choices but the redistributive grants that it finances reduce a distortion in investment in higher education we prove that simple redistributive policies can yield pareto improvements and increase aggregate income indeed redistributive policies are under most circumstances more effective in increasing efficiency than corrective taxes or subsidies where higher education is beyond the reach of the poor

robust financial contracting and the role of venture capitalists we derive a role for inside investors such as venture capitalists in resolving various agency problems that arise in a multistage financial contracting problem absent an inside investor the choice of securities is unlikely to reveal all private information and overinvestment may occur an inside investor however always makes optimal investment decisions if and only if he holds a fixed fraction contract where he always receives a fixed fraction of the project s payoff and finances that same fraction of future investments this contract also eliminates any incentives of the venture capitalist to misprice securities issued in later financing rounds in this article we develop a model of financial contracting with multiple investment decisions and show how conflicts of interest and informational asymmetries can be effectively resolved by an inside investor i e an investor who not only provides capital but also works closely with the firm monitors it frequently and is generally very well informed about the firm s prospects and investment opportunities venture capitalists are obvious examples of inside investors and their function has been an important motivation for this article banks especially in japan and germany are also involved in monitoring and can be viewed as playing the role of inside investors in this article we examine the potential benefits of inside investors in a context where there are no restrictions beyond limited liability on the type of financial contracts that can be written we address a basic financial contracting problem involving an entrepreneur who has an idea for a project but does not have sufficient capital to fund it an important assumption is that there are several stages in the project s development and that a decision must be made at each stage whether the project should be continued or abandoned if the project is continued the amount of additional capital to be invested must also be determined we assume that the entrepreneur as an insider observes private information about the project s profitability at each stage this information is not

competition risk neutrality and loan commitments abstract we rationalize fixed rate loan commitments forward credit contracting with options in a competitive credit market with universal risk neutrality future interest rates are random but there are no transactions costs borrowers finance projects with bank loans and choose ex post unobservable actions that affect project payoffs credit contract design by the bank is the outcome of a non cooperative nash game between the bank and the borrower the initial formal analysis is basically in two steps first we show that the only spot credit market nash equilibria that exist are inefficient in the sense that they result in welfare losses for borrowers due to the bank s informational handicap second we show that loan commitments because of their ability to weaken the link between the offering bank s expected profit and the loan interest rate enable the complete elimination of informationally induced welfare losses and thus produce an outcome that strictly pareto dominates any spot market equilibrium perhaps our most surprising result is that if the borrower has some initial liquidity it is better for the borrower to use it now to pay a commitment fee and buy a loan commitment that entitles it to borrow in the future rather than save it for use as inside equity in conjunction with spot borrowing

asymmetric valuations and the role of collateral in loan agreements loan contracts with provision for collateral are of two general types in one the collateral may be an existing asset of the borrowing firm which is pledged to a lender in the event of default in this case collateral does not increase the assets that the borrower would lose if there is default since all the borrower s assets are attachable therefore the expected marginal cost to the borrower of providing an additional unit of collateral includes principally transactions costs associated with the collateral l this describes the usual type of commercial loan arrangement with the collateral being either equipment real estate accounts receivable or inventories in the other type of loan contract the collateral is an additional asset that is given up by the borrower if there is default that is in addition to the usual assets that are available to its lenders the borrower assigns as collateral to a creditor an asset that would normally not be legally attachable this arrangement is more common in small business loans that are secured by a personal asset e g a house of the entrepreneur likewise debt issued by a legally separate subsidiary may be secured by an asset of the parent firrn in these cases the expected marginal cost to the borrower the owner manager of the small firm or the parent corporation in the latter example of providing an additional unit of collateral

causality in demand a co integrated demand system for trout in germany this article focuses on causality in demand a methodology where causality is imposed and tested within an empirical co integrated demand model not prespecified is suggested the methodology allows different causality of different products within the same demand system the methodology is applied to fish demand on the german market for farmed trout and substitutes it is found that supply sources i e aquaculture and fishery are not the only determinant of causality storing tightness of management and aggregation level of integrated markets might also be important the methodological implication is that more explicit focus on causality in demand analyses provides improved information the results suggest that frozen trout forms part of a large european whitefish market where prices of fresh trout are formed on a relatively separate market redfish is a substitute on both markets the policy implication is that increased production of trout causes a downward pressure on fresh trout prices but froz

collateral and competitive equilibria with moral hazard and private information the authors examine equilibrium credit contracts and allocations under different competitivity specifications and explain the economic roles of collateral under these specifications both moral hazard and adverse selection are considered the principal message is that how a competitive equilibrium is conceptualized significantly affects the characterization of equilibrium credit contracts specifically some well known results in the rationing literature are shown to rest delicately on the adopted equilibrium concept two somewhat surprising results emerge first high quality borrowers with unlimited collateral may be priced out of the market despite the bank having idle deposits second high quality borrowers may put up more collateral this paper explores the allocational consequences of alternative credit market competitivity specifications and explains the different economic roles of collateral under these specifications we model banks that lend to borrowers financing projects with payoffs depending on a priori unknown borrower attributes and ex post unobservable borrower actions borrowers are assumed to have unconstrained access to collateral our analysis is based on two concepts of competitive equilibrium under both banks compete in the sense that they earn zero expected profits however under the first concept of equilibrium ti as in jaffee and russell 11 all rents accrue to borrowers whereas under the second concept t2 all rents accrue to depositors as in stiglitz and weiss 17 our research makes two main points first we demonstrate that the manner in which a competitive equilibrium is conceptualized importantly influences the characterization of equilibrium credit allocations specifically one of the findings is that the rationing equilibria of stiglitz and weiss 17 and others should be viewed as rather delicate things in that they are very sensitive to the competitivity specification used for instance

relationship lending and sme financing in the continental european bank based system this paper analyzes the relationship between banks and smes in the continental european bank based system we find that smes with longer bank relationships have enhanced access to loans but at the same time they bear a higher cost for their debt we also find that firms maintaining two bank relationships get the cheapest debt which establishes a limit for the degree of concentration of bank relationships our results also show that the existence of trust between firm and bank improves access to financing and reduces the borrowing costs whereas it increases the likelihood that guarantees will have to be provided as a consequence it seems that a relationship based on trust is a better strategy to improve smes access to finance than the establishment of longer or more concentrated relationships

the role of soft information in a dynamic contract setting evidence from the home equity credit market credit underwriting is a dynamic process involving multiple interactions between borrower and lender during this process lenders have the opportunity to obtain hard and soft information from the borrower we analyze more than 108 000 home equity loans and lines of credit applications to study the role of soft and hard information during underwriting our data set allows us to distinguish lender actions that are based strictly on hard information from decisions that involve the collection of soft information our analysis confirms the importance of soft information and suggests that its use can be effective in reducing overall portfolio credit losses ex post

loan commitments investment decisions and the signalling equilibrium abstract this paper analyzes the use of loan commitments to finance future risky investment projects when the capital market is informed of a firm s project quality having a loan commitment would lead the firm to overinvest if banks are competitively rational the cost of this overinvestment would be borne by the firm making the loan commitment contract unattractive when the project quality is private information firms will signal their project qualities through purchasing loan commitments this signal is credible because purchasing a loan commitment poses overinvestment cost to the firm this paper establishes and characterizes this dissipative signalling equilibrium

capital market access and corporate loan structure in this article we use a sample of 14 075 loan packages issued between 1993 and 2007 to examine if borrower access to external capital markets influences corporate loan structure we classify firms into three access categories private unrated public and rated public private firms have the lowest access and to date no large sample investigation of their loans has been done in the literature rated public firms access the capital markets the most we find the level of access influences loan structure in ways that are consistent with having greater or fewer financing alternatives as well as theories on information asymmetry agency and monitoring in particular loans to firms with higher levels of access have shorter maturities fewer loan facilities per package and a lower probability of being secured we also find that a higher level of access results in a higher incidence of single lender loans but among multiple lender loans it leads to a larger number of lenders furthermore we find evidence

on the determinants of credit rationing firm level evidence from transition countries abstract using survey data for firms from eastern european transition economies we investigate the determinants of credit rationing our rationing definition incorporates firms whose loan application was rejected but also discouraged potential borrowers we employ a bivariate probit with censoring approach that accounts for the underlying selectivity since rationed firms are a subset of those without a loan we include firm specific attributes related to the alleviation of informational asymmetries and therefore expected to affect credit rationing we find that credit rationing depends on firm size profitability sales growth ownership type legal status sectoral heterogeneity and the country specific level of domestic credit

price elasticities and tax reform in mexico price responses are usually estimated for the average household however different households are unlikely to respond in a similar way to movement in prices consequently relying on averages may be misleading when examining the behaviour of a particular group of households such as the poor this article uses six household surveys collected in mexico between 1989 and 2000 to derive price responses for 10 product groups and for five levels of income households the estimated price elasticities are then fed into a micro simulation model to measure the effect of a marginal tax reform the results find that that poorer households tend to react substantially more to movement in prices suggesting the usefulness of estimating elasticities that reflect the behavioural responses of the poor rather than of the entire population the micro simulation results indicate that reducing the taxes on maize alcoholic beverages and vegetables would be both more equitable and more efficient in terms of social welfare mean

the commitment problem of secured lending the paper presents a new theory of trade credit in which firms buy inputs on credit from suppliers to restore the benefits of secured bank financing impaired by contract incompleteness in a setting where investment is endogenous and unobservable to financiers we show that a bank secured credit contract is time inconsistent upon being granted credit the entrepreneur has an incentive to alter the original input combination jeopardizing the bank s revenues anticipating the entrepreneur s opportunism the bank offers an unsecured credit contract reducing the surplus from the venture one way for the entrepreneur to commit to the contract terms is to purchase inputs on credit from the supplier the supplier observes the input investment and acts as a guarantor that inputs will be purchased as contracted thus facilitating access to secured bank financing the commitment role of trade credit still holds in a multi period extension that investigates the impact of bank relationship lending on secured debt and trade credit our model provides novel testable predictions on optimal financial contracts in both one period and repeated lending relationships

adaptive expectations coordination in an economy with heterogeneous agents abstract in this paper we study the problem of expectations coordination on the stationary state in a one dimensional economy with heterogeneous agents we consider a constant gain adaptive learning rule we allow for heterogeneity of the fundamentals and of the constant gain parameters we show that these two sources of heterogeneity may create difficulties to the process of coordination

the relationship between u k banks and their small business customers much emphasis is placed upon the benefits to both parties of a good relationship between banks and their small business customers having explained the significance of smes in the u k economy the papers goes on to consider briefly some of the arguments which underpin the rationale for these relationships the roles of information and communication are discussed and the poor co ordination between banks smes and their accountants is highlighted evidence from over 6 000 small businesses in response to the forum of private business survey in 1994 is then presented this demonstrates the strong positive association between more participative relationships and more positive perceptions of their banks by firms finally it is suggested that a virtuous circle of information and communication could be established if the parties cooperate in a systematic process of risk assessment

the determinants of contract terms in bank revolving credit agreements the paper examines the determinants of contract terms on bank revolving credit agree ments revolvers of medium large publicly traded companies we model the duration maturity secured status and pricing decisions within a simultaneous decision frame work thereby overcoming the biased and inconsistent estimates in prior single equation studies of debt contract terms we find strong interrelationships between contract terms with significant bi directional relationships between duration and secured status and be tween the all in spread and commitment fees and a unidirectional relationship from both duration and secured status to all in spread we also illustrate how several single equa tion studies of contract terms draw incorrect conclusions because of their inappropriate assumption that other contract terms and leverage were exogenous finally our results sup port the hypothesis that the setting of contract terms plays an important role in alleviating contracting problems

adaptive learning and roads to chaos the case of the cobweb abstract we investigate the dynamics of the cobweb model with adaptive expectations a linear demand curve and a nonlinear s shaped increasing supply curve both stable periodic and chaotic price behaviour can occur we investigate how the dynamics of the model depend on the parameters both infinitely many period doubling and period halving bifurcations can occur when the demand curve is shifted upwards the same result holds with respect to the expectations weight factor

asymmetric information collateral and moral hazard in a credit market characterized by a priori asymmetric information collateral not only can identify credit applicants but also can result in moral hazard involving the borrower s use of pledged assets the borrower s other alternatives are to apply for unsecured bank credit and be priced as average or to acquire financing by selling an asset and subsequently renting it for continued use the optimal secured loan contract for higher quality firms is shown to involve overcollateralization there is underinvestment relative to first best in maintenance of the pledged assets but overinvestment relative to the level that would be chosen without bank monitoring self financing and unsecured credit are chosen by the intermediate and lowest quality groups respectively

microfinance subsidies and local externalities we analyse equilibrium borrowers effort and the cost of microcredit loans in the presence of moral hazard project correlation and subsidies under group lending conditions our results show that under the assumption of endogenous effort project correlation has significant effects on borrowers effort only when it is determined by asymmetric positive or negative shocks these findings indicate that the well known negative effect of within group symmetric project correlation on group lending with joint liability disappears once endogenous effort is taken into account we also analyse the effects of subsidised lending and asymmetric correlation on the relative convenience in terms of borrowers effort of the alternative 1 between group lending and individual lending with notional collateral and 2 among three different market structures of the microfinance industry

organizational distance and use of collateral for business loans abstract this paper examines the effect of organizational distance i e distance between the headquarters of the bank that grants a loan and the location of the borrower on the use of collateral for business loans by spanish banks on the basis of the recent lender based theory of collateral inderst r mueller h m 2007 a lender based theory of collateral journal of financial economics 84 826 859 we find that for the average borrower the use of collateral is higher for loans granted by local lenders than by distant ones we also show that the difference in the likelihood of collateral in loans granted by local lenders relative to distant lenders is higher among older and larger firms than respectively younger and smaller firms we also find that banks use lending technologies that are different for near and for distant firms in response to organizational diseconomies

collateral relationship lending and family firms prior research suggested that relationship lending could play a role in solving asymmetric information problems between borrower and lender other studies suggest a relationship between family ownership and the shareholder bondholder agency conflict the present paper investigates the impact of relationship characteristics family ownership and their interaction effects upon the use of collateral in sme lending we examine the determinants of collateral as well as the determinants of the choice between business and personal collateral using decision tree analysis the results reveal that relationship characteristics have a significant influence but not always in the direction as expected moreover they do not seem to be the primary determinants in our classification models the most important determinants in both classification models seem to be the loan amount total assets and the family versus non family firm distinction in addition we differentiate between line of credit and non line of credit loans and find significant differences between these decision trees