Using account level data from a credit bureau, we study the role that social capital plays in consumer default decisions. We find that borrowers in communities with greater social capital are significantly less likely to default on loans, even after adjusting for different levels of income and other characteristics such as credit scores. The results are strongest for potentially strategic defaults on mortgages; a one standard deviation increase in social capital reduces such defaults by 12.4 %. These results can be generalized to any mortgage default. Our results also indicate that the effect of social capital is most prominent among more creditworthy borrowers, suggesting that when given a choice, the social cost of defaulting is an important factor affecting default decisions. We find a similar impact of social capital on consumer defaults in other datasets with more detailed information on borrowers as well. Our results are robust to modeling and methodology choices, as well as controlling for other drivers of default such as wealth, income and amenities from homeownership. Our results suggest that increasing social capital via measures to build community cohesion such as promotion of owner-occupied home ownership may be one avenue to deter consumer default.

使用来自征信局的帐户级别数据，我们研究了社会资本在消费者违约决策中所扮演的角色。我们发现，即使在针对不同的收入水平和其他特征（例如信用评分）进行调整后，拥有更大社会资本的社区中的借款人拖欠贷款的可能性也大大降低。对于潜在的战略抵押违约，结果最为明显。社会资本每增加一个标准差，这种违约就会减少12.4％。这些结果可以推广到任何抵押违约。我们的结果还表明，在更具信誉的借款人中，社会资本的影响最为明显，这表明，在给予选择权时，违约的社会成本是影响违约决策的重要因素。我们在其他数据集中也发现了社会资本对消费者违约的类似影响，同时也有关于借款人的更详细信息。我们的结果对于建模和方法选择以及对其他违约驱动因素（如财富，收入和房屋所有权提供的便利）的控制都是可靠的。我们的研究结果表明，通过建立社区凝聚力的措施来增加社会资本，例如促进业主自置居所的所有权，可能是阻止消费者违约的一种途径。