Similar results were obtained for loan officers’ credit risk assessments (Table 2, Panel A).
Again, in terms of the ability of the firm to service the debt, the CSP loan proposal received the
most favorable risk assessment (mean ¼ 4.19; standard deviation ¼ 1.17) followed by the CSPR&
D (mean ¼ 4.10; standard deviation ¼ 0.97) and the R&D (mean ¼ 3.50; standard deviation ¼
1.28) requests for financing. The general purpose loan request was again considered as the most
risky (mean ¼ 3.25; standard deviation ¼ 1.45). The difference between the four experimental
groups was also statistically significant (F ¼ 2.83; p ¼ 0.04).