Banks play a greater role in the German financial system than in the UnitedStates or Britain. Germany's large universal banks are admired by those whoadvocate bank deregulation in the United States. Others admire the universalbanks for their supposed role in corporate governance and industrial...

The Uniform Small Loan Law (USLL) was the Russell Sage Foundation's primary device for fighting what it viewed as the scourge of high-rate lending to poor people in the first half of the twentieth century. The USLL created a new class of lenders who could make small loans at interest rates...

Institutions that rely on joint liability to facilitate lending to the poor have a long historyand are now a common feature of many developing countries. Economists have proposedseveral theories of joint-liability lending that stress various aspects of its informational andenforcement advantages...