“Man to Loan $1500 and Serve as Clerk”: Trading Jobs for Loans in Mid-Nineteenth-Century San Francisco
研究了19世纪中期加州雇主以工作换取员工大额贷款的现象，发现尽管效率低下，但普遍且有利可图，主要反映了资本市场的不完善。
This paper explores the phenomenon of “job-loan trading”—in which employers offered jobs in exchange for substantial loans from their new employees—as practiced in mid-nineteenth-century California. A sample of newspaper advertisements from 1857–76 reveals that despite the obvious inefficiencies of linking labor and capital markets, job-loan trading was both common and profitable. I assess labor market bonding against moral hazard or adverse selection as a possible explanation, but conclude that the job-loan trades primarily provide evidence of substantial Pacific Coast capital market imperfections. This conclusion has implications for the broader question of how financial markets develop.