IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/9742.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Prodigals and Projecture: An Economic History of Usury Laws in the United States from Colonial Times to 1900

Author

Listed:
  • Hugh Rockoff

Abstract

During the Colonial era usury laws in the United States were strict both in terms of the maximum rate that could be charged and the penalties that would be imposed. In Massachusetts in eighteenth century, for example, the maximum rate was 6 percent, and both principal and interest were forfeited if usury could be proved against the lender. The laws were eased during the early national period, and in many states they were repealed, although the United States never completely abandoned its system of usury laws. By 1870, when a limited reaction set in, the liberalization had reached the point where the great bulk of commercial transactions must have been largely unaffected by the usury laws, at least in non-crisis years. Two factors seem to have been paramount in producing the liberalization: changes in ideas about the effectiveness of government regulation in general and about the effectiveness of usury laws in particular, and competition among the states for capital. This history suggests that the usury laws, when tightly drawn, may have had a larger impact than economic historians have generally recognized.

Suggested Citation

  • Hugh Rockoff, 2003. "Prodigals and Projecture: An Economic History of Usury Laws in the United States from Colonial Times to 1900," NBER Working Papers 9742, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:9742
    Note: DAE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w9742.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rudolph C. Blitz & Millard F. Long, 1965. "The Economics of Usury Regulation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 73(6), pages 608-608.
    2. Harry E. Miller, 1924. "Earlier Theories of Crises and Cycles in the United States," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 38(2), pages 294-329.
    3. Donna M. Kish-goodling, 1998. "Using The Merchant of Venice in Teaching Monetary Economics," The Journal of Economic Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(4), pages 330-339, January.
    4. Eichengreen, Barry, 1984. "Mortgage Interest Rates in the Populist Era," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(5), pages 995-1015, December.
    5. White, Eugene N., 2001. "California Banking in the Nineteenth Century: The Art and Method of the Bank of A. Levy," Business History Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 75(2), pages 297-324, July.
    6. John H. Munro, 2001. "The Origins of the Modern Financial Revolution: Responses to Impediments from Church and State in Western Europe, 1200 - 1600," Working Papers munro-01-02, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    7. Davis, Lance E., 1960. "The New England Textile Mills and the Capital Markets: A Study of Industrial Borrowing 1840–1860," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 20(1), pages 1-30, March.
    8. Howard Bodenhorn & Hugh Rockoff, 1992. "Regional Interest Rates in Antebellum America," NBER Chapters, in: Strategic Factors in Nineteenth Century American Economic History: A Volume to Honor Robert W. Fogel, pages 159-187, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. William F. Harding, 1895. "The State Bank of Indiana," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 4(1), pages 1-1.
    10. Eugene N. White, 1999. "California Banking in the Nineteenth Century: The Art and Method of the Bank of A. Levy," NBER Working Papers 7187, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. repec:ucp:bknber:9780226301129 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Claudia Goldin & Hugh Rockoff, 1992. "Strategic Factors in Nineteenth Century American Economic History: A Volume to Honor Robert W. Fogel," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number gold92-1.
    13. Snowden, Kenneth A., 1987. "Mortgage Rates and American Capital Market Development in the Late Nineteenth Century," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 47(3), pages 671-691, September.
    14. Jadlow, Joseph M, 1977. "Adam Smith on Usury Laws," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 32(4), pages 1195-1200, September.
    15. Maria Pia Paganelli, 2003. "In Medio Stat Virtus: An Alternative View of Usury in Adam Smith's Thinking," History of Political Economy, Duke University Press, vol. 35(1), pages 21-48, Spring.
    16. Claudia Goldin & Hugh Rockoff, 1992. "Introduction to "Strategic Factors in Nineteenth Century American Economic History: A Volume to Honor Robert W. Fogel"," NBER Chapters, in: Strategic Factors in Nineteenth Century American Economic History: A Volume to Honor Robert W. Fogel, pages 1-8, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Samuel Rezneck, 1950. "Distress, Relief, and Discontent in the United States during the Depression of 1873-78," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 58(6), pages 494-494.
    18. Stiglitz, Joseph E & Weiss, Andrew, 1981. "Credit Rationing in Markets with Imperfect Information," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(3), pages 393-410, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Temin, Peter & Voth, Hans-Joachim, 2004. "Financial Repression in a Natural Experiment: Loan Allocation and the Change in the Usury Laws in 1714," CEPR Discussion Papers 4452, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. Peter Temin & Hans‐Joachim Voth, 2008. "Interest Rate Restrictions in a Natural Experiment: Loan Allocation and the Change in the Usury Laws in 1714," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(528), pages 743-758, April.
    3. Zegarra, Luis Felipe, 2017. "Usury laws and private credit in Lima, Peru. Evidence from notarized records," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 68-93.
    4. Carruthers, Bruce G. & Guinnane, Timothy W. & Lee, Yoonseok, 2009. "Bringing "Honest Capital" to Poor Borrowers: The Passage of the Uniform Small Loan Law, 1907-1930," Center Discussion Papers 50949, Yale University, Economic Growth Center.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Howard Bodenhorn, 2016. "Two Centuries of Finance and Growth in the United States, 1790-1980," Working Papers id:11352, eSocialSciences.
    2. John Landon-Lane & Hugh Rockoff, 2004. "Monetary Policy and Regional Interest Rates in the United States, 1880-2002," NBER Working Papers 10924, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Wang, Ta-Chen, 2008. "Paying back to borrow more: Reputation and bank credit access in early America," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 45(4), pages 477-488, September.
    4. Kris J. Mitchener & Mari Ohnuki, 2008. "Institutions, Competition, and Capital Market Integration in Japan," NBER Working Papers 14090, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Jeremy Atack & Fred Bateman & Robert A. Margo, 2000. "Rising Wage Dispersion Across American Manufacturing Establishments, 1850-1880," NBER Working Papers 7932, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Landon-Lane, John & Rockoff, Hugh, 2007. "The origin and diffusion of shocks to regional interest rates in the United States, 1880-2002," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 44(3), pages 487-500, July.
    7. Margo, Robert A., 1999. "Regional Wage Gaps and the Settlement of the Midwest," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 128-143, April.
    8. Kris James Mitchener & Mari Ohnuki, 2008. "Institutions, Competition, and Capital Market Integration in Japan," IMES Discussion Paper Series 08-E-12, Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan.
    9. Robert A. Margo, 1998. "Labor Market Integration Before the Civil War," NBER Working Papers 6643, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Arvind Ashta & Laurence Attuel-Mendès & Zaka Ratsimalahelo, 2015. "Another “French paradox”: explaining why interest rates to microenterprises did not increase with the change in French usury legislation," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 40(3), pages 479-509, December.
    11. Nathalie Sigot & Laurie Bréban, 2020. "The influence of laws on informal rules: a reassement of the controversy between Jeremy Bentham and Adam Smith on usury [L’influence des lois sur les règles informelles : une relecture de la contro," Post-Print hal-03825528, HAL.
    12. Robert A. Margo, 2002. "The North-South Wage Gap, Before and After the Civil War," NBER Working Papers 8778, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Bodenhorn, Howard, 1999. "An Engine of Growth: Real Bills and Schumpeterian Banking in Antebellum New York," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 36(3), pages 278-302, July.
    14. Michael D. Bordo & Hugh Rockoff & Angela Redish, 1993. "A Comparison of the United States and Canadian Banking Systems in the Twentieth Century: Stability vs. Efficiency?," NBER Working Papers 4546, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Komlos, John, 2012. "A Three-Decade “Kuhnian” History of the Antebellum Puzzle: Explaining the shrinking of the US population at the onset of modern economic growth," Discussion Papers in Economics 12758, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    16. Chad Turner & Robert Tamura & Sean Mulholland & Scott Baier, 2007. "Education and income of the states of the United States: 1840–2000," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 12(2), pages 101-158, June.
    17. Scott Carson, 2011. "Demographic, residential, and socioeconomic effects on the distribution of nineteenth-century African-American stature," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 24(4), pages 1471-1491, October.
    18. Nan Zhang, 2015. "Changing a ‘culture’ of corruption: Evidence from an economic experiment in Italy," Rationality and Society, , vol. 27(4), pages 387-413, November.
    19. Murizah Osman Salleh & Aziz Jaafar & M. Shahid Ebrahim, 2011. "The Inhibition of Usury (Riba An-Nasi'ah) and the Economic Underdevelopment of the Muslim World," Working Papers 11002, Bangor Business School, Prifysgol Bangor University (Cymru / Wales).
    20. Joseph P. Kaboski & Trevon D. Logan, 2011. "Factor Endowments and the Returns to Skill: New Evidence from the American Past," Journal of Human Capital, University of Chicago Press, vol. 5(2), pages 111-152.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • N2 - Economic History - - Financial Markets and Institutions

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:nbr:nberwo:9742. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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.