We present a critique of Behavioral Economics, the dominant approach to reforming the regulation of retail credit, and propose a new approach to managing uncertainty in consumer lending. This new approach draws on a different model of decision-making, Distributed Cognition, to improve contract...

In the United States, we now take our ability to pay with plastic for granted. In other parts of the world, however, the establishment of a ""credit-card economy"" has not been easy. In countries without a history of economic stability, how can banks decide who should be given a credit card? How...

We review the literature in sociology and related fields on the fast global growth of consumer credit and debt and the possible explanations for this expansion. We describe the ways people interact with the strongly segmented consumer credit system around the world—more specifically, the way...

The architecture of credit card markets -- Market building in the transitional context -- Setting the stage : consumer credit and banking before and during the transition -- Inner circles : card issuing at the dawn of the market -- The stick but no carrot : disseminating cards through employers...

Into the Red explores the emergence of a credit card market in post-Soviet Russia during the formative period from 1988 to 2007. In her analysis, Alya Guseva locates the dynamics of market building in the social structure, specifically the creative use of social networks. Until now, network...

Surrogacy - contracted gestation and birthing of babies for other people - is a multibillion-dollar global industry. Because it commodifies a practice that belongs to an intimate, "sacred" sphere of the family, and mixes babies and money, it offers a natural window into a theoretical problem of...