Introduction

Fictions of Credit’s introduction lays out the book’s aims and methods. It argues for a revised understanding of England’s credit culture: the nexus of social relations, discursive forms, and economic practices to which the widespread use of monetary credit gave rise in the early modern period. To do this, it lays out the case made by economic historians that, because of cash shortages and expanding market activity in the period, the majority of transactions at all levels of society ran on credit. The introduction argues that the resulting social and economic indeterminacy gave rise to something more complex than either straightforward trust or blanket suspicion: rhetorical strategies intended to produce trust in one’s own soundness and interpretive strategies aimed at evaluating the trustworthiness of others. The introduction then turns to the book’s source texts and methods: plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries and practical handbooks written by and for merchants, retailers, householders, and farmers.

Fictions of Credit in the Age of Shakespeare

In Shakespeare’s England, credit was synonymous with reputation, and reputation developed in the interplay of language, conduct, and social interpretation. As a consequence, artful language and social hermeneutics became practical, profitable skills. Since most people both used credit and extended it, the dual strategies of implication and inference—of producing and reading evidence—were everywhere. Like poetry or drama, credit was constructed: fashioned out of the interplay of artifice and interpretation. The rhetorical dimension of economic relations produced social fictions on a range of scales: from transitory performances facilitating local transactions to the long-term project of maintaining creditworthiness to the generalized social indeterminacy that arose from the interplay of performance and interpretation. Fictions of Credit in the Age of Shakespeare examines how Shakespeare and his contemporaries represented credit-driven artifice and interpretation on the early modern stage. It also analyses a range of practical texts—including commercial arithmetics, letter-writing manuals, legal formularies, and tables of interest—which offered strategies for generating credit and managing debt. Looking at plays and practical texts together, Fictions of Credit argues that both types of writing constitute “equipment for living”: practical texts by offering concrete strategies for navigating England’s culture of credit, and plays by exploring the limits of credit’s dangers and possibilities. In their representations of a world rewritten by debt relations, dramatic texts in particular articulate a phenomenology of economic life, telling us what it feels like to live in credit culture: to live, that is, inside a fiction.

An Analysis of the Perceptions of Regulatory Authorities about the Causes of Non-Performing Loans

The purpose of this study is to identify the causes of non-performing loans (NPAs) from regulators’ perspective and ways to minimise it. The primary data through two interviews from two regulators are taken as a method of data collection. The major findings of the study are that pressure to remain profitable by banks, personal problems; lack of best banking practice, professionalism, earthquake, conflict period, economic cycle may be the reasons behind high non-performing loan in Nepal. Regulators perceived that prudent credit assessment and decision; counselling of customer problem and development of prudent credit culture may help to reduce non-performing loans in Nepal.

Financial Deepening and its Impact on the Credit Culture in Bihar

Ancient India (especially during the Maurya and the Gupta empires) had an organized private credit dispensation system. Although there were no banks in the modern sense of the word, but the merchant guilds did have systematic procedure of evaluating, vetting and sanctioning of credit to its members. The system was not open to the general public but then, the membership of the guild could be acquired quite easily by anyone desirous and serious enough to do business in the specific area that a particular guild promoted. This system of credit dispensation remained in India till the advent of the British East India Company.

Determinants of older consumers’ interest in home equity conversion products

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to highlight opportunities for the banking sector arising from the population’s aging and the expected reduction in pension incomes. Home equity conversion (HEC) instruments are a potentially useful way of restoring households’ finances and satisfying their needs, with implications for the demand for financial services. Design/methodology/approach By using an ordered probit regression model, the paper analyzes data obtained from a survey of 2,000 Italian households. Findings The main finding of this paper is that individuals with greater familiarity with consumer credit, a cognitive and decision-making approach favorable to use of credit, and an internal locus of control show greater interest in various forms of equity conversion. Originality/value This paper extends the analysis of the determinants of individuals’ interest in HEC products. It focuses more closely than the existing literature on households’ credit behaviors, attitudes toward credit and locus of control. The paper helps identify the potential targets of marketing campaigns and commercial proposals, and highlights the levers that the banks can focus on in communicating with customers and future prospects. Moreover, this paper suggests that there is a need to develop greater awareness on the part of people who could be interested in these products. Therefore, appropriate financial education projects should be implemented to develop a better “credit” culture, with due appreciation of the usefulness of credit as a means of supporting household budgets.

Credit Culture of Students as the Object of Sociological Analysis

Growth of volume in crediting to individuals in the Russian Federation during 2008-2018 and problems of debt maintenance have actualized the need of studying changes in the sphere of Russian crediting culture. The aim of the paper is to study credit attitude of modern student youth. At the first stage of the study the authors analyzed the correlation between key options: "credit culture", "credit attitude", "credit behavior", "financial culture", "financial attitude", "financial behavior". The investigators carried out the review of foreign and Russian research works aimed at studying the credit culture and credit behavior of students. They revealed features of foreign studies of credit culture / behavior, on this basis they conclude that this subject is poorly developed in Russia not only by individual socio-demographic groups, but also by the population generally. The working hypothesis of the research has been put forward: it is the change in the credit attitude of young people who do not have their own credit experience, which is the evidence of serious changes in the credit culture. At the second stage, the pilot study "Credit behavior of the population" (December 2017 -January 2018, Volgograd, accidental sampling (n = 404), the sample representation task was not set, the method of collecting information: on-line questioning) has been implemented. The results of the study let the authors to describe the credit culture of Volgograd Universities' students. The strong savings orientation among students has been defined. They are prone to saving money in a difficult situation and are ready to provide financial assistance, but they would not like to resort to it themselves in case of difficulties. Students realize the need of improving their level of financial literacy for building their own effective financial strategies. In the minds of students there is a necessity to correlate risk and result, but not all of them are ready to risk. Analysis of differences in the responses of full-time and extra-mural students has confirmed the working hypothesis. Credit attitude of students, in our point of view, testify the rootedness of the youth credit culture. The correlation between the results of estimating the impact of credit practice on credit culture and the modern scale of crediting to Russians makes it possible to hypothesize that there will be a strong transformation of the credit culture of Russians in the next 20 years. The authors plan to test this hypothesis in their further studies.

Farm Debt Waiver in India

Farm debt waivers have been introduced in India, from time to time, to provide relief to the indebted farmers. The chapter focuses on the viability of farm debt waiver in India—whether it serves as an ephemeral palliative (a temporary reassuring measure) or an enduring risk management tool (a permanent remedy to build resilience against a longstanding debt crisis)—for farmers by employing situation, actor, process, learning, action, performance (SAP-LAP) framework. Loan waivers occasionally appear as a quick fix to alleviate farmers' misery. They trigger moral hazard as the farmers make no attempts to repay the loans themselves with the expectation that an imminent waiver from the government would clear their debts, thus ruining the credit culture of the country. From a policy viewpoint, it is imperative to make agriculture sustainable by lessening inefficiencies, augmenting income, moderating costs, and affording protection through premeditated and well-defined insurance schemes.

Determinants of Non Performing Loans in Commercial Banks

The study attempts to ascertain the determinants of nonperforming loans in National Bank of Commerce. Data was collected from 152 respondents. Tables, percentages, mean and standard deviation were used to analyze data. Data collection methods adopted for the study were interview, questionnaire and documentary evidence. Interest rate, GDP, concentration of lending activities, bank’s loan supervision capacity and economic condition were investigated, and the results suggest that interest rate, GDP, bank’s loan supervision capacity and economic condition influence the level of NPLs. However, the results did not suggest that concentration of lending activities increase the level of NPLs. The study suggests that banks should put in place a vibrant credit process that ensures proper customer selection and risk identification, robust credit analysis, proactive monitoring and clear recovery strategies for bad loans, formulate clear policy framework that addresses issues of ethical standards and check and balance credit process, organizational capacity enhancement of banks, deliberate effort to develop credit culture for managing loans ,and ensure prudent policies that govern bank loans. Since the results for this study were encouraging, the researcher encourages replicating the study for other lending institutions. In order to extend the literature on non-performing loans, the researcher suggested incorporating models of Golem effect, Social loafing, Inverted pyramid effect, Pollyanna effect and High default culture effect. Also, basing on the merits of the study, the researcher suggests determining relationship between non-performing loans and loan size, collateral, credit culture, and credit management information system.