During the first week of April, Bill Maurer (pictured), anthropology professor and Institute for Money, Technology & Financial Inclusion director, and Stephen Rea, anthropology graduate student, served as guest editors of Credit Slips, a blog on credit, bankruptcy, consumers, and financial institutions. Created by academics – including UCI’s Katie Porter, professor in the School of Law – the blog highlights cutting-edge research and expert perspective on the rapidly changing world of finance.

For their part, Maurer and Rea sparked lively debate with posts on varying social meanings of money, including its use to shower newlyweds in Ghana. Maurer’s findings are highlighted in a recent article in Bloomberg Businessweek. The duo urged readers to embrace the notion that cash can – and in many places should - be used in tandem with mobile money, explaining that the presence of one needn’t be at the exclusion of the other. They concluded their week-long editorial stint with a post on opportunities still open in the growing mobile money sphere and challenges policy-makers face in regulating a relatively new industry.

Check out their posts online.