Rowena Olegario. A Culture of Credit: Embedding Trust and Transparency in American Business

Rowena Olegario has written a narrative about the importanceof information in the development of the U.S. economy by exploringthe development of mercantile agencies, organizations that pioneeredthe practices of credit evaluation and reporting in nineteenth-centuryAmerica. The main argument throughout the book is that the establishmentof credit evaluation and reporting moved business behavior frombehind a veil of secrecy and institutionalized a culture oftransparency throughout the economy. Mercantile agencies accomplishedthis transformation by commodifying credit