`Man to loan $1500 and serve as clerk': Trading jobs for loans in mid-nineteenth-century San...

Explores the phenomenon of `job-loan trading' as practiced in mid-nineteenth-century California. Sampling the job-loan trade; Observations about the job-loan trade; Trends in the quantity and value of job-loan trades; Share of job-loan trades within white-collar employment; Role of moral hazard and adverse selection; Loans as a response to imperfect lending markets.