Dark Matter Credit traces how this extensive private network outcompeted banks and thrived prior to World War I—not just in France but in Britain, Germany, and the United States—until killed off by government intervention after 1918. Overturning common assumptions about banks and economic growth, the book paints a revealing picture of an until-now hidden market of thousands of peer-to-peer loans made possible by a network of brokers who matched lenders with borrowers and certified the borrowers’ creditworthiness.

A major work of scholarship, Dark Matter Credit challenges widespread misperceptions about French economic history, such as the notion that banks proliferated slowly, and the idea that financial innovation was hobbled by French law. By documenting how intermediaries in the shadow credit market devised effective financial instruments, this compelling book provides new insights into how countries can develop and thrive today.

Chapter 1.1740 and the Rules of the Game

Chapter 2.Spatial Variety versus Centralization: Change in Eighteen-Century Credit Markets

Chapter 3.The Revolution: Collapse, Reform, and Modeling the Space of Debt

Chapter 4.Networks of Knowledge

Chapter 5.The Brief but Significant Life of an Institutional Innovation

Chapter 6.The Diffusion pf Banks: Peer-to-Peer Credit Markets as Substitutes for Banks

Chapter 7.Banks and Notaries

Chapter 8.Prices Return

Chapter 9.Conclusion

Appendices

Notes

Bibliography