Berkeley Program in Law and Economics

In this article credit is studied by the prism of social norms theories, which are introduced to explain the existence of an alternative system of regulation that, in this specific analysis, regulates social behaviors based in confidence. Confidence, here, seems like a subjective, but with objective elements, moral belief that makes a population creates patterns of behaviors. Because of this, the article’s focus is to investigate how people’s confidence in each other affect, reduce or increase the demand of credit, and how to use confidence to improve credit access. These studies are fallowed by an empiric research that was done in the cities of Ouro Preto and Mariana in 2008.