Credit and community: working class debt in the UK since 1880

This book examines credit in working class communities since 1880, focusing on forms of borrowing that were dependent on personal relationships and social networks. It provides an extended historical discussion of credit unions, legal and illegal moneylenders (loan sharks), and looks at the concept of ‘financial exclusion’. Initially, the book focuses on the history of tallymen, check traders, and their eventual movement into moneylending following the loss of their more affluent customers, due to increased spending power and an increasingly liberalized credit market. They also faced growing competition from mail order companies operating through networks of female agents, whose success owed much to the reciprocal cultural and economic conventions that lay at the heart of traditional working class credit relationships. Discussion of these forms of credit is related to theoretical debates about cultural aspects of credit exchange that ensured the continuing success of such forms of lending, despite persistent controversies about their use. The book contrasts commercial forms of credit with formal and informal co-operative alternatives, such as the mutuality clubs operated by co-operative retailers and credit unions. It charts the impact of post-war immigration upon credit patterns, particularly in relation to the migrant (Irish and Caribbean) origins of many credit unions and explains the relative lack of success of the credit union movement. The book contributes to anti-debt debates by exploring the historical difficulties of developing legislation in relation to the millions of borrowers who have patronized what has come to be termed the sub-prime sector.

The diversification and financial performance of US credit unions

For US credit unions, revenue from non-interest sources has increased significantly in recent years. We investigate the impact of revenue diversification on financial performance for the period 1993–2004. The impact of a change in strategy that alters the share of non-interest income is decomposed into a direct exposure effect, reflecting the difference between interest and non-interest bearing activities, and an indirect exposure effect which reflects the effect of the institution’s own degree of diversification. On both risk-adjusted and unadjusted returns measures, a positive direct exposure effect is outweighed by a negative indirect exposure effect for all but the largest credit unions. This may imply that similar diversification strategies are not appropriate for large and small credit unions. Small credit unions should eschew diversification and continue to operate as simple savings and loan institutions, while large credit unions should be encouraged to exploit new product opportunities around their core expertise.

Which Credit Unions are Acquired?

Recent years have witnessed a wave of consolidation amongst US credit unions. Through hazard function estimations, this paper identifies the determinants of acquisition for credit unions during the period 2001-06. The hazard of acquisition is inversely related to both asset size and profitability, and positively related to liquidity. Growth-constrained credit unions are less attractive acquisition targets. Institutions with low capitalization and those with small loans portfolios relative to total assets are susceptible to acquisition. The investigation presents unique empirical evidence of a link between technological capability and the hazard of acquisition. During the period 2001-06, when there was sustained growth in the use of internet technology, credit unions with no website were at the highest risk of acquisition. © Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2009.

Irish Credit Unions: Investigating performance determinants and the opportunity cost of regulatory compliance

The study investigates how producer-specific environmental factors influence the performance of Irish credit unions. The empirical analysis uses a two-stage approach. The first stage measures efficiency by a data envelopment analysis (DEA) estimator, which explicitly incorporates the production of undesirable outputs such as bad loans in the modelling, and the second stage uses truncated regression to infer how various factors influence the (bias-corrected) estimated efficiency. A key finding of the analysis is that 68% of Irish credit unions do not incur an extra opportunity cost in meeting regulatory guidance on bad debt.

A Long and Winding Road to Employment?: Disabled young people in Northern Ireland making the transition to adulthood

This paper presents the findings of a qualitative research project that explores the experiences and aspirations of disabled young people in Northern Ireland as they make and deal with the transition to adulthood. The study involved young people with disabilities (n=76) in four areas of Northern Ireland, ensuring a geographical spread, an urban/rural mix and representation of both communities. Young people with learning disabilities were included as well as those with physical and/or sensory impairments. This paper focuses on those who were completing job training or work placements and examines the role of such schemes in assisting young people’s transition to adulthood. The research found that many young people had positive experiences of work placement and job training and that social interaction was important to them. Few young people, however, had made the actual transition from work placement or training to ‘real’ employment.

Distance between home and work: A multilevel analysis of individual workers, neighbourhoods, and employment sites in Northern Ireland

Abstract. We explore the distances between home and work for employees at twenty-eight different employment sites across Northern Ireland. Substantively, this is important for better understanding the geography of labour catchments. Methodologically, with data on the distances between place of residence (566 wards) and place of work for some 15 000 workers, and the use of multilevel modelling (MLM), the analysis adds to the evidence derived from other census-based and survey-based studies. Descriptive analysis is supplemented with MLM that simultaneously explores individual, neighbourhood, and site variations in travel-to-work patterns using hierarchical and cross-classified model specifications, including individual and ecological predictor variables (and their cross-level interactions). In doing so we apportion variability to different levels and spatial contexts, and also outline the factors that shape spatial mobility. We find, as expected, that factors such as gender and occupation influence the distance between home and work, and also confirm the importance of neighbourhood characteristics (such as population density observed in ecological analyses at ward level) in shaping individual outcomes, with major differences found between urban and rural locations. Beyond this, the analysis of variability also points to the relative significance of residential location, with less individual variability in travel-to-work distance between workers within wards than within employment sites. We conclude by suggesting that, whilst some general ‘rules’ about the factors that shape labour catchments are possible (eg workers in rural areas and in higher occupations travel further than others), the complex variability between places highlighted by the MLM analysis illustrates the salience of place-specific uniqueness.

Charabanc, cultural capital and the men of recognised credit

This paper compares the cultural legacy of the all-female Charabanc with that of Field Day, its fellow counterpart in the Irish Theatre touring movement in the 1980s. It suggests that a conscious awareness amongst the all-male Field Day board of successful writers and directors of what Bourdieu has called 'cultural capital' is implicated in the enduring authority of the work of that company within the history of Irish theatre. Conversely the paper considers if the populist Charabanc, in its steadfast refusal to engage with the hierarchies of academia and publishing, was too neglectful of the cultural capital which it accrued in its heyday and has thus been party to its own occlusion from that same history.