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The definitive history of pawnbroking in the United States from the nation’s founding through the Great Depression, In Hock demonstrates that the pawnshop was essential to the rise of capitalism. The class of working poor created by this economic tide could make ends meet only, Wendy Woloson argues, by regularly pawning household objects to supplement inadequate wages. Nonetheless, businessmen, reformers, and cultural critics claimed that pawnshops promoted vice, and employed anti-Semitic stereotypes to cast their proprietors as greedy and cold-hearted. Using personal correspondence, business records, and other rich archival sources to uncover the truth behind the rhetoric, Woloson brings to life a diverse cast of characters and shows that pawnbrokers were in fact shrewd businessmen, often from humble origins, who possessed sophisticated knowledge of a wide range of goods in various resale markets. A much-needed new look at a misunderstood institution, In Hock is both a first-rate academic study of a largely ignored facet of the capitalist economy and a resonant portrait of the economic struggles of generations of Americans.

The article investigates the importance of financial literacy content for social work students who at some point in their career will encounter financially-excluded clients. Financial literacy content can include understanding how fringe economy businesses operate, including their business model, knowledge of local and national nonpredatory financial services, understanding credit and the credit industry, and knowledge of state and national regulations governing high-cost financial services. This article also examines the financial literacy gap in social work education and provides an overview of some key fringe economy enterprises, such as payday lenders, car title pawns, pawnshops, rent-to-own businesses, buy-here-pay-here used car lots, and debit/credit cards. Last, the article explores ways to integrate financial literacy training with traditional social work skills.

The roughly 9.1% of all U.S. families that are without some type of transaction account (unbanked) are disproportionately represented among minorities. The unbanked often must rely on alternative ways to carry out basic financial transactions such as cashing payroll checks and paying bills. This study analyzes unique survey data and finds that a consumer's decision to patronize check-cashing businesses is jointly made with the decision to be unbanked. For the unbanked, these businesses are an important source of financial services. Attributes that contribute to these decisions, however, vary with the racial/ethnic group. Latent preference effects are also observed to influence this joint decision for blacks and Hispanics. These findings may explain in part why the provisions of the Debt Collection Improvement Act (DCIA) of 1996 have not been more successful in bringing unbanked federal benefits recipients into the financial mainstream. Consumer participation in mainstream financial markets can improve their ability to build assets and create wealth, can protect them from theft and discriminatory, predatory, or otherwise unsavory lending practices, and may promote economic stability and vitality in the communities where they reside. By more fully understanding consumers' financial decisions, policies can be better directed to improve the effectiveness of legislation such as the DCIA of 1996 in encouraging mainstream financial market participation.

Immigrants' lack of financial integration has been explained by individual characteristics including education, income, legal status and English ability, with little attention given to the geographic dimensions of banking. This article builds on the literature on financial exclusion and ecology to investigate the spatial relationships between Immigrant settlement patterns in Greater Boston in 2000 and accessibility to various types of financial institutions. The analysis reveals important differences among the 10 largest immigrant groups, with poorer and more isolated immigrants disproportionately exposed to check-cashers and pawn-brokers. Immigration interacts with race and class to create a complex intra-urban financial ecology of exclusion.