Consumer Lending in France and America
Credit and Welfare

This book traces the historical emergence of modern consumer lending in America and France.

Gunnar Trumbull (Author)

9781107693906, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 11 August 2014

239 pages, 10 b/w illus.
22.6 x 15 x 1.5 cm, 0.23 kg

'In his exploration of this divergence, Trumbull remains skeptical of the oft-cited link between consumerism and credit as well as the notion that credit expanded, especially to low-income groups, as the social safety net in the US began to fray in the 1980s. Instead, he traces the differences in outcomes to the emergence of different coalitions of social and political groups with varying degrees of acceptance of consumer credit … Summing up: recommended.' S. Paul, Choice

Why did America embrace consumer credit over the course of the twentieth century, when most other countries did not? How did American policy makers by the late twentieth century come to believe that more credit would make even poor families better off? This book traces the historical emergence of modern consumer lending in America and France. If Americans were profligate in their borrowing, the French were correspondingly frugal. Comparison of the two countries reveals that America's love affair with credit was not primarily the consequence of its culture of consumption, as many writers have observed, nor directly a consequences of its less generous welfare state. It emerged instead from evolving coalitions between fledgling consumer lenders seeking to make their business socially acceptable and a range of non-governmental groups working to promote public welfare, labor, and minority rights. In France, where a similar coalition did not emerge, consumer credit continued to be perceived as economically regressive and socially risky.

1. Introduction
2. Commercial banks and consumer credit in the United States
3. Banks against credit: consumer finance in France
4. American retailers and credit innovation
5. Selling France on credit
6. Credit and reconstruction
7. The politics of usury
8. Credit for being American
9. Deregulation and the politics of over-indebtedness
10. Consumer credit and American liberalism.

Subject Areas: Business & management [KJ], Economic history [KCZ], Political economy [KCP], Comparative politics [JPB]