The Future of High-Cost Credit

In a world of increasingly insecure work and runaway inflation, the regulation of payday loans is a central policy priority. The challenge is complex, requiring a broad, interdisciplinary understanding not only of current legal regimes, but also their history, political economy, and lived reality. In this pathbreaking book, Dr Jodi Gardner brilliantly draws on these perspectives to provide urgently required directions for reform. * Jeremias Adams-Prassl, Professor, University of Oxford, UK * This theoretically and empirically rich analysis of high-cost credit provides a clear argument for both regulatory and broader welfare approaches to tackle the problems it causes. As such, this book deserves to be widely read by lawyers and social scientists alike. * Karen Rowlingson, Professor of Social Policy and Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of York, UK * Jodi Gardner’s The Future of High-Cost Credit blends philosophical, politico-economic and socio-legal analysis to make a sophisticated and important contribution to the debate on regulation of high-cost credit. * Iain Ramsay, Emeritus Professor of Law, University of Kent, UK * Jodi Gardner’s book, The Future of High-Cost Credit, .... steps across the freedom versus regulation dichotomy that typically characterises debate around high cost credit. Taking a clear eyed view of the issues at hand, the book also addresses the often neglected policy debate relevant to the harms arising from consumer reliance on high cost credit ... The Future of High Cost Credit is valuable, and indeed crucial, reading for those interested in contract theory, credit and banking law, financial regulation and social justice. * Jeannie Paterson, Professor of Law, Melbourne Social Equity Institute, Australia * Gardner provides a deft exploration of high-cost credit, or ‘payday’ loans, in the UK – not shying away from complexity and debate. She lays bare the business models which can keep borrowers trapped in an exploitative and expensive cycle of credit, the insufficiencies of the existing regulatory approaches to tame the market, and why the problem will persist as poverty rates soar in the UK. This book is a devastating indictment of the system around high-cost credit. * Mia Gray, Professor of Geography, University of Cambridge, UK *