IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/jechis/v58y1998i02p408-431_02.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

When Your Word Is Not Enough: Race, Collateral, and Household Credit

Author

Listed:
  • Olney, Martha L.

Abstract

Black families included in the 1918/19 BLS Consumer Purchases Survey used installment credit more frequently and merchant credit less frequently than White families. Economic and demographic characteristics explain the racial difference for installment but not for merchant credit. I argue greater demand for installment credit by Black families was satisfied because repossession of collateral upon buyer default overcame merchants' personal prejudice with regard to creditworthiness, but absence of tangible collateral impacted the availability of merchant credit. Low use of merchant credit can account for relatively high interwar saving rates for low-income Black families.

Suggested Citation

  • Olney, Martha L., 1998. "When Your Word Is Not Enough: Race, Collateral, and Household Credit," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 58(2), pages 408-431, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:cup:jechis:v:58:y:1998:i:02:p:408-431_02
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0022050700020568/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gagnon, Julien & Geloso, Vincent & Isabelle, Maripier, 2023. "The incubated revolution: Education, cohort effects, and the linguistic wage gap in Quebec during the 20th century," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 207(C), pages 327-349.
    2. John A. James & Michael G. Palumbo & Mark Thomas, 2007. "Consumption smoothing among working-class American families before social insurance," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 59(4), pages 606-640, October.
    3. Song Han, 2001. "On the Economics of Discrimination in Credit Markets," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2002-02, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    4. Song Han, 2004. "Discrimination in Lending: Theory and Evidence," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 29(1), pages 5-46, July.
    5. Fausto Hernández-Trillo & Ana Laura Martínez-Gutiérrez, 2022. "The Dark Road to Credit Applications: The Small-Business Case of Mexico," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 62(1), pages 1-25, October.
    6. Hrung, Warren B., 2002. "Parental housing values and children's consumption," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(4), pages 521-529, July.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:jechis:v:58:y:1998:i:02:p:408-431_02. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/jeh .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.