The Socially Optimal Loan Auditing with Multiple Projects

Peter Simmons and Nongnuch Tantisantiwong

Discussion Papers from Department of Economics, University of York

Abstract: This paper fills the gap in the literature by introducing an efficient, incentive compatible audit policy that can minimise the social loss created by the audit cost while maximising social welfare. We apply this within a loan auditing context, but the method is also applicable to any accounting and tax audit context. We explain why the loan contract design for finance of projects varies between different situations. Each project outcome is random and private information of its individual owner, but reported outcomes can be audited at a cost. Our framework simultaneously determines incentive compatible auditing policies, interest rates and default probabilities to yield an efficient contract design. We show how the socially best loan audit policy and repayments depend on the degrees of information asymmetry and risk correlation between projects, the number of agents in the agreement and the agents’ perception of loan default.

Keywords: Optimal contract; Incentive compatible audit policy; Heterogeneous and correlated risk; Welfare; Loan auditing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D81 D82 G21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-acc, nep-ban, nep-cta and nep-ppm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.york.ac.uk/media/economics/documents/discussionpapers/2022/2207.pdf Main text (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:yor:yorken:22/07

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers from Department of Economics, University of York Department of Economics and Related Studies, University of York, York, YO10 5DD, United Kingdom. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Paul Hodgson ().