In this paper, we present a brief exposition of the history of the secured credit card, beginning with its origins in California in the 1970s. We present a series of stylized facts based on a December 2015 cross section of the secured card market. We find that most secured cards require an annual fee, tend not to have promotional offers or rewards, and often have higher purchase annual percentage rates than their unsecured counterparts. We also find that the percentage of secured card accounts in a delinquency status is more than double that of unsecured cards and that far fewer secured cards are inactive compared with unsecured cards. In addition, the annual income of secured card consumers is about 43 percent lower than unsecured card consumers. Last, we examine how the credit scores of consumers opening a secured card account change during the first two years of account history. We find that keeping a secured card account open is correlated with improved creditworthiness, while closing an account, either in good standing or in default, is correlated with significantly reduced creditworthiness.

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 scholars have overlooked the role that networks play in facilitating exchange in mass markets because they have exclusively focused on firm-to-firm or person-to-person ties. Into the Red demonstrates how networks that combine individuals and organizations help to build markets for mass consumption. The book is situated on the cutting edge of emerging interdisciplinary research, linking multiple layers of analysis with institutional evolution. Using an intricate framework, Guseva chronicles both the creation of a credit card market and the making of a mass consumer. These processes are placed in the context of the ongoing restructuring in postcommunist Russia and the expansion of Western markets and ideologies through the rest of the world.

From the beginning with the Diners Club card in 1949 to the present, this is a history of credit cards and their impact on society.

Electronic Value Exchange examines in detail the transformation of the VISA electronic payment system from a collection of non-integrated, localized, paper-based bank credit card programs into the cooperative, global, electronic value exchange network it is today. Topics and features: provides a history of the VISA system from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s; presents a historical narrative based on research gathered from personal documents and interviews with key actors; investigates, for the first time, both the technological and social infrastructures necessary for the VISA system to operate; supplies a detailed case study, highlighting the mutual shaping of technology and social relations, and the influence that earlier information processing practices have on the way firms adopt computers and telecommunications; examines how “gateways” in transactional networks can reinforce or undermine established social boundaries, and reviews the establishment of trust in new payment devices.

Provides an in-depth overview of the Federal Reserve System, including information about monetary policy and the economy, the Federal Reserve in the international sphere, supervision and regulation, consumer and community affairs and services offered by Reserve Banks. Contains several appendixes, including a brief explanation of Federal Reserve regulations, a glossary of terms, and a list of additional publications.

The efficient markets hypothesis has been the central proposition in finance for nearly thirty years. It states that securities prices in financial markets must equal fundamental values, either because all investors are rational or because arbitrage eliminates pricing anomalies. This book describes an alternative approach to the study of financial markets: behavioral finance. This approach starts with an observation that the assumptions of investor rationality and perfect arbitrage are overwhelmingly contradicted by both psychological and institutional evidence. In actual financial markets, less than fully rational investors trade against arbitrageurs whose resources are limited by risk aversion, short horizons, and agency problems. The book presents and empirically evaluates models of such inefficient markets. Behavioral finance models both explain the available financial data better than does the efficient markets hypothesis and generate new empirical predictions. These models can account for such anomalies as the superior performance of value stocks, the closed end fund puzzle, the high returns on stocks included in market indices, the persistence of stock price bubbles, and even the collapse of several well-known hedge funds in 1998. By summarizing and expanding the research in behavioral finance, the book builds a new theoretical and empirical foundation for the economic analysis of real-world markets.

Credit Card Nation is the first comprehensive look at an ongoing social and economic crisis-America's escalting dependence on credit. By locating consumer debt within the context of corporate and governmental debt.