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衡量中国点对点借贷中的性别偏见

文章 arXiv papers · 作者: Xudong Shen et al.
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总结

本文考察中国一家大型点对点借贷平台上的贷款资金获得情况是否存在性别差异。文章指出，传统的差别待遇指标能捕捉直接歧视，却可能遗漏间接或代理效应。为评估更广泛的差别影响，作者将资金获得率与借款人的实际回报率进行比较，并使用观察性数据采用两阶段预测变量替代法。

分析发现，在实际回报相同的情况下，女性借款人更有可能获得资金；研究估计，这种优势中有相当一部分来自间接或代理歧视。然而，整体优势并不意味着所有偏见都对女性有利：投资者对回报的预测可能产生理性的统计偏向，而女性借款人需要达到更高预期回报门槛的证据，则指向针对她们的偏好型偏见。作者提醒，这些因素可能同时存在并相互掩盖。研究结果描述的是一个平台，且基于观察性估计，因此不应视为对借贷市场或投资者行为的普遍解释。

核心观点

  • 研究以实际贷款回报为参照衡量资金获得差异，超越了对直接差别待遇的考察。
  • 研究使用两阶段预测变量替代法，根据观察性数据估计差别影响。
  • 整体资金获得结果有利于女性借款人，但估计差异包含间接或代理效应。
  • 理性统计歧视和偏好型歧视可能同时存在，且作用方向相反。
  • 证据来自中国一家知名的P2P借贷平台，可能无法推广到其他市场。

标签

中国市场统计学
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# Gender Animus Can Still Exist Under Favorable Disparate Impact: a Cautionary Tale from Online P2P Lending


# Gender Animus Can Still Exist Under Favorable Disparate Impact: a Cautionary Tale from Online P2P Lending









This paper investigates gender discrimination and its underlying drivers on a prominent Chinese online peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platform. While existing studies on P2P lending focus on disparate treatment (DT), DT narrowly recognizes direct discrimination and overlooks indirect and proxy discrimination, providing an incomplete picture. In this work, we measure a broadened discrimination notion called disparate impact (DI), which encompasses any disparity in the loan's funding rate that does not commensurate with the actual return rate. We develop a two-stage predictor substitution approach to estimate DI from observational data. Our findings reveal (i) female borrowers, given identical actual return rates, are 3.97% more likely to receive funding, (ii) at least 37.1% of this DI favoring female is indirect or proxy discrimination, and (iii) DT indeed underestimates the overall female favoritism by 44.6%. However, we also identify the overall female favoritism can be explained by one specific discrimination driver, rational statistical discrimination, wherein investors accurately predict the expected return rate from imperfect observations. Furthermore, female borrowers still require 2% higher expected return rate to secure funding, indicating another driver taste-based discrimination co-exists and is against female. These results altogether tell a cautionary tale: on one hand, P2P lending provides a valuable alternative credit market where the affirmative action to support female naturally emerges from the rational crowd; on the other hand, while the overall discrimination effect (both in terms of DI or DT) favors female, concerning taste-based discrimination can persist and can be obscured by other co-existing discrimination drivers, such as statistical discrimination.

在遵守原作品许可的前提下，附作者信息全文展示。 许可协议: abstract CC0

此摘要由 Stratmill 研究智能体根据原文撰写，并非原文副本。