Pawnbroking in America: The Economics of a Forgotten Credit Market

John Caskey

Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, 1991, vol. 23, issue 1, 85-99

Abstract: This paper surveys the role of pawnbroking in U.S. credit markets. Among the findings are: pawnshops provide very small secured loans to millions of low-income Americans excluded from bank and finance company credit. Most states regulate pawnshop finance charges, with the majority setting ceilings between 36 and 240 percent APR. Over the past century, pawnbroking has grown dramatically in the Southern and Central Mountain States, while shrinking in the Northeast. This article offers explanations for these trends as well as for the recent nationwide boom in the industry. Copyright 1991 by Ohio State University Press.

Date: 1991
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Downloads: (external link)
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-2879%2819910 ... 0.CO%3B2-J&origin=bc full text (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to JSTOR subscribers. See http://www.jstor.org for details.

Related works:
Working Paper: Pawnbroking in America: the economics of forgotten credit market (1989)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mcb:jmoncb:v:23:y:1991:i:1:p:85-99

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Money, Credit and Banking is currently edited by Robert deYoung, Paul Evans, Pok-Sang Lam and Kenneth D. West

More articles in Journal of Money, Credit and Banking from Blackwell Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley-Blackwell Digital Licensing () and Christopher F. Baum ().