A Culture of Credit : : Embedding Trust and Transparency in American Business / / Rowena Olegario.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter HUP eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2013 (Canada)
• VerfasserIn: Olegario, Rowena,
• Place / Publishing House: Cambridge, MA : : Harvard University Press, , [2009]; ©2006
• Year of Publication: 2009
• Language: English
• Series: Harvard Studies in Business History ; 50
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (286 p.)

In the growing and dynamic economy of nineteenth-century America, businesses sold vast quantities of goods to one another, mostly on credit. This book explains how business people solved the problem of whom to trust--how they determined who was deserving of credit, and for how much. Rowena Olegario traces the way resistance, mutual suspicion, skepticism, and legal challenges were overcome in the relentless quest to make information on business borrowers more accurate and available.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Acknowledgments -- Contents -- Introduction -- 1. Mercantile Credit in Britain and America, 1700-1860 -- 2. A "System of Espionage": The Origins of the Credit-Reporting Firm -- 3. Character, Capacity, Capital: How to Be Creditworthy -- 4. Jewish Merchants and the Struggle over Transparency -- 5. Growth, Competition, Legitimacy: Credit Reporting in the Late Nineteenth Century -- 6. From Competition to Cooperation: The Birth of the Credit Man, 1890-1920 -- Epilogue: Business Credit Reporting in the Twenty-First Century -- Notes -- Index