Title :
Lending Behavior and Community Structure in an Online Peer-to-Peer Economic Network
Author :
Krumme, Katherine Ann ; Herrero, Sergio
Author_Institution :
Media Lab., Massachusetts Inst. of Technol., Cambridge, MA, USA
Abstract :
Increasingly, economic transactions are taking place over social networks. We study the static and dynamic characteristics of a peer-to-peer lending network through 350,000 loan listings and accompanying member profiles from the online marketplace Prosper.com. Our results imply that social factors such as participation in affinity groups and descriptive profile text are correlated with financial indicators; at the same time, we see evidence of suboptimal lending decisions, minimal learning, and herding behavior in the network. We discuss implications and suggest possible improvements to the online peer-to-peer lending model.
Keywords :
financial data processing; human computer interaction; peer-to-peer computing; social networking (online); community structure; economic transactions; financial indicators; lending behavior; minimal learning; network herding behavior; online peer-to-peer economic network; online peer-to-peer lending model; social networks; suboptimal lending decisions; Computer networks; Economic indicators; Environmental economics; Geography; History; Laboratories; Peer to peer computing; Social factors; Social implications of technology; Social network services; economics; social networks;
Conference_Titel :
Computational Science and Engineering, 2009. CSE '09. International Conference on
Conference_Location :
Vancouver, BC
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4244-5334-4
Electronic_ISBN :
978-0-7695-3823-5
DOI :
10.1109/CSE.2009.185
