Myungsin Chae

From the wisdom of crowds to my own judgment in microfinance through online peer-to-peer lending platforms

Information asymmetry is one of the fundamental problems that online peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms face. This problem becomes more acute when platforms are used for microfinance, where the targeted customers are mostly economically under-privileged people. Most of the prior empirical studies have been based on data from Prosper.com or similar sites that compete in traditional consumer loan markets. Our study examines P2P lending in microfinance for which borrowers are unbankable so that signals on creditworthiness of new borrowers are very limited. In addition, microfinance customers have more incentive to repeatedly seek loans from the market. Under this microfinance setting, we examine how lenders change their decisions as creditworthiness inference becomes increasingly possible through the accumulation of transaction history. Our findings confirm that lenders seek the wisdom of crowds when information on creditworthiness is extremely limited but switch to their own judgment when more signals are transmitted through the market. Different information sets are utilized according to the structures of decisions. Due to the possibility of a repeated game, it is also shown that borrowers try to maintain a good reputation, and direct communication with lenders may adjust incorrect inference from hard data when their creditworthiness is questioned.

An empirical investigation of factors affecting ubiquitous computing use and U-business value

This research investigates the factors that influence the use of ubiquitous computing and U-business value. It considers system, information and service qualities as the major factors affecting the use of ubiquitous computing. System quality is measured by accessibility, stability and ease of use. Relevance, accuracy and timeliness are used to measure information quality. Reliability, quickness and secrecy are used to measure service quality. U-business value measures the value created from business operations, business processes, and customer relationships improved by the use of ubiquitous computing. Our results show that system accessibility, information accuracy and timeliness, and service quickness exert crucial influences on ubiquitous computing use. We also find that the use of ubiquitous computing creates value by enhancing business operations, business processes, and customer satisfaction. These findings suggest that information quality is relatively more important than system and service qualities for the creation of value in a ubiquitous computing environment. Our research model and empirical results provide valuable indicators for the direction of future research and also suggest managerial guidelines for the successful development and adoption of ubiquitous computing within an organization.

Varying criticality of key success factors of national e-Strategy along the status of economic development of nations

Abstract Many studies mention the importance of national e-Strategy as it is a vital contributing factor for ICT-enabled development. However, it is difficult to find a conceptual framework that suggests how the national e-Strategy should be defined and applied by the target country. This creates more confusion for policy makers. This paper reviews previous research on national e-Strategies to recognize its significance as a major contributing factor. Based on that, this research defines the critical success factors of national e-Strategy and investigates the possibility of prioritizing factors by the scale of economy through a Delphi survey. By reviewing the evaluated status of e-Readiness and co-relating the evaluation with economic status, we may further investigate the significance of the digital divide and national e-Strategy. The outcome of this research may be applicable in differentiating critical success factors from general ingredients of National e-Strategy.