The Rise of Federal Credit Programs in the United States

Federal credit programs are a major form of government intervention in American
markets, but missing data and theoretical blind spots have caused scholars to repeatedly overlook and misconstrue these policies. This project addresses this
problem by undertaking a review of the rise of federal credit programs in the United
States to better understand the development of federal credit and yield useful data for future research on the relationship between government credit, market development, social welfare, and inequality. The dataset created by this project, paired with two case studies, provides the foundation for a more robust institutional theory of credit programs that reevaluates the role of governments in the development of credit markets. Together, this work explores the particular place of government credit programs in the economic and political life of the United States, revealing credit allocation as a core capacity of modern states.