Collaborative Research: Uniform Small Loan Laws and Credit for Poor Americans in the Early 20th-Century

该项目的目标是首次深入研究《统一小额贷款法》(USLL)的制定和通过情况，该法律由新成立的拉塞尔·塞奇基金会牵头，旨在规范二十世纪头几十年美国穷人的信贷。他们的希望是将剥削性和不道德的贷款人(“高利贷”)赶出信贷市场，取而代之的是合法的贷款人，从而使作为债务人的穷人受益。基金会的努力与统一法律运动相吻合，但代表了一种混合战略，即利用市场监管法律来产生社会福利成果。研究方法是双管齐下的，结合了对基金会内部运作及其政治游说努力的广泛档案分析，以及对1906年至1939年期间在州一级通过的USLL的量化分析。后者将利用现有的数据集，并辅之以研究人员收集的额外数据。

The objective of this project is to conduct the first in-depth study of the creation and passage of the Uniform Small Loan Law (USLL), an effort spearheaded by the newly established Russell Sage Foundation to regulate credit for poor people in the United States during the first decades of the twentieth century. The hope was to push exploitative and unethical lenders ("loan sharks") out of credit markets, replace them with legitimate lenders, and thereby benefit poor people as debtors. The Foundation's efforts dovetailed with the uniform law movement, but represented a hybrid strategy that used market-regulatory law to produce social welfare outcomes. The research methodology is two-pronged, combining an extensive archival analysis of the inner workings of the Foundation and its political lobbying efforts with a quantitative analysis of passage of the USLL at the state level over the period from 1906 to 1939. The latter will make use of existing data sets, supplemented by additional data gathered by the researchers.