This volume brings together historians, economists, political scientists, and anthropologists to present a global perspective on the new forms of lending and borrowing that have become a key feature of twentieth-century mass consumer societies, emphasizing comparative and transnational historical perspectives.

Autorentext
JAN LOGEMANN Research fellow at the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C., USA, and director of the project 'Transatlantic Perspectives: Europe in the Eyes of European Immigrants to the United States, 19301980.' His work focuses on modern consumer societies and includes the forthcoming book, Trams or Tailfins: Public and Private Prosperity in Postwar West Germany and the United States.

Inhalt
Towards a Global History of Credit in Modern Consumer Societies; J.Logemann PART I: LENDERS AND LENDING PRACTICES Selling Televisions on Credit: The Rise of Consumer Credit in Postwar France; I.Gaillard Moral or Modern Marketing? Sparkassen and Consumer Credit in West Germany; R.Belvederesi-Kochs Credit in a Nation of Savers: The Growth of Consumer Borrowing in Japan; A.Gordon PART II: BORROWERS AND CREDIT ACCESS The Business of Working-Class Credit: Subprime Markets in the United Kingdom since 1880; S.O'Connell American Women's Struggle to End Credit Discrimination in the Twentieth Century; L.Bowdish Virtually Creditworthy: Privacy, the Right to Information, and Consumer Credit Reporting in West Germany, 19501985; L.Frohman PART III: STATE REGULATION AND CREDIT POLICIES Banking on Consumer Credit: Explaining Patterns of Household Borrowing in the United States and France; G.Trumbull French Consumer Credit Policy in the 1950s and 1960s: From Opposition to Control; S.Effosse From Cradle to Bankruptcy? Credit Access and the American Welfare State; J.Logemann PART IV: CULTURES OF CREDIT Economic Agents and the Culture of Debt; S.Meyer Japan and the Western Model: An Economist's View of Cultures of Household Finance; C.Y.Horioka 'Ahead a Good Deal': Taking the Long View of Household Debt and Credit in American Life; L.Calder