Rational Calculation and Trust: A Comparative Institutional Analysis of Emerging Credit Card Markets in Socialist and Post-Socialist and Developing Societies

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This project examines the role of rational calculation and trust in lending in emerging credit card markets in socialist and post-socialist countries. The fundamental goal of the project is to investigate the institutional conditions underlying rational calculation, the ways that trust may be substituted for rational calculation as well as the consequences of using one or the other. The researchers will compare how banks issue credit cards in seven socialist and post-socialist economies; these countries represent three transition paths from a command economy and, thus, three different contexts that banks must negotiate. The first group (the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland) has, by and large, successfully completed both a political and an economic transformation; the second group (Bulgaria and Russia) are considered so far to have failed to consolidate a well-functioning set of institutions; and the third group (China and Vietnam) has opted for an economic transformation while keeping political institutions stable. Data that will be gathered from interviews with credit card applicants and users and banking and government officials as well as from documents describing banking and credit card practices, decision making, industry organization and practices, and the practice of credit lending and usage.