The Development of Consumer Credit in Global Perspective: Business, Regulation, and Culture

Front Matter....Pages i-x
Introduction: Toward a Global History of Credit in Modern Consumer Societies....Pages 1-20
Front Matter....Pages 21-21
Selling Televisions on Credit: The Rise of Consumer Loans in Postwar France....Pages 23-40
Moral or Modern Marketing? Sparkassen and Consumer Credit in West Germany....Pages 41-62
Credit in a Nation of Savers: The Growth of Consumer Borrowing in Japan....Pages 63-81
Front Matter....Pages 83-83
The Business of Working-Class Credit: Subprime Markets in the United Kingdom since 1880....Pages 85-107
American Women’s Struggle to End Credit Discrimination in the Twentieth Century....Pages 109-128
Virtually Creditworthy: Privacy, the Right to Information, and Consumer Credit Reporting in West Germany, 1950–1985....Pages 129-154
Front Matter....Pages 155-155
Banking on Consumer Credit: Explaining Patterns of Household Borrowing in the United States and France....Pages 157-182
French Consumer Credit Policy in the 1950s and 1960s: From Opposition to Control....Pages 183-199
From Cradle to Bankruptcy? Credit Access and the American Welfare State....Pages 201-219
Front Matter....Pages 221-221
Economic Agents and the Culture of Debt....Pages 223-241
Japan and the Western Model: An Economist’s View of Cultures of Household Finance....Pages 243-256
“Ahead a Good Deal”: Taking the Long View of Household Debt and Credit in American Life....Pages 257-273
Back Matter....Pages 275-295