The influence of information asymmetries and adverse selection on market breakdown is attracting considerable attention. Previous researches demonstrated that information asymmetries and adverse selection are critical issues in online peer-to-peer lending platforms, especially in emerging markets. We believe that information asymmetries can be mitigated through mechanism design. We compare two screening mechanisms, namely, “offline” and “online” mechanisms, by using a dataset from Renrendai.com. We determine that the problems attributed to information asymmetries play a negative role in market efficiency under the “online” mechanism, whereas the “offline” mechanism effectively mitigates these issues. Under the “offline” mechanism, potential borrowers can obtain loans with a high probability of approval and an interest rate that is lower by 0.02 than that under the “online” mechanism, and the default probability of their loans is reduced by 24% in comparison with that under the “online” mechanism.
Online Mechanism Design for VMs Allocation in Private Cloud