This article argues that consumer credit reports can create two sorts of vicious cycles, which can contribute to to cycles of poverty and deepen race-based disenfranchisement. The first takes place in credit markets themselves. Even on a neoclassical model of credit reporting, credit reports can...

Although most studies argue that expansive secondary markets for loan sales tend to enhance opportunities to manage risk, lower loan rates, and improve access to credit, other studies point to situations in which locally based credit providers remain important (e.g. relationship lending in the...