This paper examines female shareholdings in Australia's first bank, the Bank of New South Wales. Existing descriptions of colonial women have portrayed them generally as domestic servants, farmhands, prostitutes or wives and mothers, rather than as businesswomen or investors. But by 1823 the...

This article surveys the growth of consumer credit in Australia during the twentieth century, particularly after the Second World War. Until the 1970s, the regulation of Australia's financial market caused formal consumer credit to be provided mainly by finance companies under hire-purchase...