ABSTRACT

This study, first published in 1979, examines and contrasts two concepts of credit rationing. The first concept takes the relevant price of credit to be the explicit interest rate on the loan and defines the demand for credit as the amount an individual borrower would like to receive at that rate. Under the alternative definition, the price of credit consists of the complete set of loan terms confronting a class of borrowers with given characteristics, while the demand for credit equals the total number of loan which members of the class would like to receive at those terms. This title will be of interest to students of monetary economics.