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This paper addresses the problem of social interactions and the lender-borrower relationship by measuring the disconnect between borrowers and lenders across a wide range of lending-related attributes. The degree by which lenders and borrowers connect disconnect depends on whether lenders' and borrowers' perceptions across these attributes are symmetric or asymmetric. We compare field survey results from 120 loan officers at Rural Credit Cooperatives (RCCs) in China's coastal Shandong province, and pair them with an existing survey on identical questions to 394 farm households in the same region. Pairing lenders' perception towards borrowers regarding RCC microcredit lending mechanism, against borrowers' perception towards lenders and how themselves were perceived by lenders in the same regards, we observe on many dimensions a disconnect between them in the context of lenders' 'care' towards borrowers, loan rejection, memberships of RCC and group guarantee, lending concerns, cost of borrowing, reasons for default, credit rationing, and lending preferences. This research provides financial institutions with outreach mechanisms to borrowers, while also training lenders to borrowers' sensitivities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a proprietary database from a large Chinese state-owned bank, we examine whether information evolved from banking relationships predicts commercial loan default by industrial firms. We find that the bank's relationship information is significantly linked to the incidence of default, and that its contribution to prediction accuracy is larger than any hard information. Furthermore, the effect of relationship information is stronger among firms that have a more sustained banking relationship. Our findings indicate that, at least in the emerging markets, a bank's relationship information still matters for large firms, despite the fact that hard information for such firms is abundant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]