"Consumer Credit and the American Economy"

For several weeks I've been talking about my new book (with Thomas A. Durkin, Gregory Elliehausen, and Michael Staten), "Consumer Credit and the American Economy." Over the span of this week I will posting various discussions summarizing elements of the book. These are not excerpts, but descriptions of various parts of the book that readers might find most interesting.

All of the posts this week have been primarily authored by my co-author Thomas Durkin, so while I've made a few edits here and there, he gets the credit for most of the hard work.

Today we will be talking about the economic study of how and why consumers use credit. Over the course of the week we will be touching on other topics covered in the book, such as the growth in the use of credit in the post-WWII era, behavioral economics, the use of high-cost loan products (such as payday loans), and the regulation of consumer credit. We will attempt to keep our posts at a somewhat reasonable length each day.