Substitution of Noncash Payment Instruments for Cash in Europe

The substitution of noncash (check, giro, credit and debit card) payments for cash transactions is of interest for monetary policy and for determining central banks' future seigniorage revenue. We develop a novel method for approximating the share of cash transactions using public information on currency stocks, noncash payments, and card payment technology for 10 European countries. We also provide a forecast of future cash use by country. The trend in cash substitution across countries is quite similar, but the countries themselves are at significantly different stages in this process. The spread of debit and credit card payments has been the key factor behind the substitution away from cash as the use of electronic cash is still in its infancy.     

我国转轨时期财政转移支付制度的目标体系及其分层问题

政府设计实施转移支付制度有着多重目标:实现纵、横平衡和矫正外溢及其他经济政治目标,这些目标之间相互联系、相互制约.规范的转移支付所追求的终极目标是区域间财政能力或公共服务水平均等化,但在实施过程中不同阶段不同时期对不同项目应分别制定不同的标准.我国现阶段政府转移支付的具体政策目标既受政府转移支付的最终目标制约,更服从于现阶段的国家宏观经济社会目标.     

移动支付产业变迁趋势及政策建议

支付是经济活动链条中的重要环节,承担着资金划拨和转移的基础性功能。随着 现代信息通信技术的发展,电子商务的持续渗透,“互联网+”等各项政策的利好推动,以移 动支付为代表的新兴电子支付方式迅速兴起,成为促进消费、便利民生的推动力量。在演进历 程方面,现代化支付体系建设为移动支付奠定基础,电子商务发展助推远程支付方式普及,线 上线下融合的商业模式推动了移动支付迅猛发展。本文结合当前移动支付市场情况,从监管政 策、行业格局、技术创新等角度提出了移动支付产业发展趋势,以及促进移动支付产业健康发 展的相关政策建议。     

Minimum payments and debt paydown in consumer credit cards

Using a data set covering one quarter of the U.S. general-purpose credit card market, we document that 29% of accounts regularly make payments at or near the minimum payment. To explain the prevalence of low payment amounts, we exploit changes in issuers’ minimum payment formulas to quantify the explanatory power of two potential theories: liquidity constraints and anchoring. At least 22% of near-minimum payers (and 9% of all accounts) respond to the formula changes in a manner consistent with anchoring as opposed to liquidity constraints alone. Our results show that anchoring to a salient contractual term has a significant impact on household repayment decisions.     

The impact of mobile payment on payment choice

This paper investigates the effect of mobile payment on the adoption and use of traditional payment instruments such as cash, checks, and credit, debit and prepaid cards at the point of sale (POS). Data are from a 2012 representative survey on consumer payment choice in the United States. Using discrete-choice random utility models to simulate consumer behavior, the estimation provides two major findings. First, mobile payment does not replace physical payment cards, but is likely to substitute for paper-based payment methods such as cash and checks at the adoption stage. Second, mobile payment does not statistically significantly influence the choice of payment means at the POS in terms of usage. However, there is suggestive evidence that it is complementary to card payments and a substitute for paper-based payment instruments. The findings highlight the potential social welfare gains of mobile payment and provide key insights into challenging issues for the private industry sector. This paper furthermore offers novel evidence on the impact of mobile payment on the use and adoption of existing payment instruments and contributes to the literature on consumer payment choice.     

The impact of SEPA in credit transfer payments: Evidence from the euro area

This paper analyses the effect of the implementation process of the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) project on credit transfer payments in euro area countries during the period between 2008 and 2013. Using both univariate and multivariate fractional regression models, we found that, when controlling for socio-demographic, economic, technological and institutional factors, the progress in the migration to SEPA formats had a relevant positive impact on the share of payments made with credit transfers. Our results provide for the first time empirical evidence of the direct effect of the implementation of SEPA on payment habits and set the basis for the discussion of some of the possible implications of payments digitalization from both economical and societal perspectives.     

An Experiment on Retail Payments Systems

We develop a novel theoretical and experimental framework to study adoption and use of cash versus electronic payments in retail transactions. The design allows us to assess the behavioral impact of sellers' service fees and buyers' rewards from using electronic payments. In the experiment, buyers and sellers faced a coordination problem, independently choosing a payment method before trading. Sellers readily adopted electronic payments but buyers did not. Eliminating service fees or introducing rewards significantly increased adoption and use of electronic payments. Buyers' economic incentives were crucial for the diffusion of electronic payments but cannot fully explain their adoption choices.     

Mortgage Design in an Equilibrium Model of the Housing Market

How can mortgages be redesigned to reduce macrovolatility and default? We address this question using a quantitative equilibrium life‐cycle model. Designs with countercyclical payments outperform fixed payments. Among those, designs that front‐load payment reductions in recessions outperform those that spread relief over the full term. Front‐loading alleviates liquidity constraints when they bind most, reducing default and stimulating housing demand. To illustrate, a fixed‐rate mortgage (FRM) with an option to convert to adjustable‐rate mortgage, which front‐loads payment reductions relative to an FRM with an option to refinance underwater, reduces price and consumption declines six times as much and default three times as much.     

Dividend Policies and Price-Volume Reactions to Cash Dividends on the Stock Market: Evidence from the Istanbul Stock Exchange

This study examines the effects of cash dividend payments on stock returns and trading volumes in the stock market. It also investigates whether there is any difference in the investment behavior of investors with respect to the dividend pay out ratio and size in the Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE)from 1995 to 2003. Prices start to rise a few sessions before cash dividend payments, and on the ex-dividend day, they fall less than do dividend payments, finally decreasing in the sessions following the payment. Trading volume shows a considerable upward shift before the payment date and, interestingly, is stable after Thus, cash dividends influence prices and trading volumes in different ways before, at, and after payment, providing some profitable active trading strategy opportunities around the ex-dividend day. The findings support price-volume reaction discussions on the divident payment date and the significant effect of cash dividends on the stock market.     

Explaining adoption and use of payment instruments by US consumers

Motivated by recent policy intervention into payments markets, we develop and estimate a structural model of adoption and use of payment instruments by U.S. consumers. Our structural model differentiates between the adoption and use of payment instruments. We evaluate substitution among payment instruments and welfare implications. Cash is the most significant substitute to debit cards in retail settings, whereas checks are the most significant in bill‐pay settings. Furthermore, low income consumers lose proportionally more than high income consumers when debit cards become more expensive, whereas the reverse is true when credit cards do.     

Sequential payments and optimal pricing in payment systems

This paper studies the intraday payment behaviour between heterogeneous banks as well as optimal intraday pricing schemes. The paper shows the social optimality of payment sequencing, which allows a bank to delay payments until the bank receives payments from the counterparty. The payment sequencing allows a bank with high liquidity cost to ‘recycle’ payment inflow from another bank with lower liqudity cost, reducing the aggregate cost of funding of banks to settle all payments. But we also see that the banks have an incentive to delay payments more than the payment sequencing requires. This underscores the importance of social planner’s role reducing settlement delay, while leaving socially efficient payment sequencing. In this context, we compare two different pricing schemes, a standard throughput guideline and a time-varying intraday tariff, to discuss the optimal incentive mechanisms in payment systems for the ‘socially efficient sequential settlement’.     

Payment transactions, instruments, and systems: A survey

The payments literature ranges from theoretical general equilibrium models to practical payment issues related to the day-to-day operation of various national networks for the transfer of money. It is an area where economic theory and institutional structure are often closely intertwined and it is currently undergoing significant change, shifting from costly paper-based systems to technologically advanced electronic payments. The extant literature is surveyed here with the aim of integrating the various strands of payment research which have been largely pursued separately. In addition, we present newly available data to illustrate and investigate a number of underdeveloped areas in this literature.     

Cost Savings from Check 21 Electronic Payment Legislation

Electronic payment legislation permitted an initially paper substitute digital image of a check, and later the electronic digital image of a check, to be processed and presented for payment on a same‐day basis. By shifting to electronic collection and presentment, Federal Reserve per item check processing costs fell by over 70%, reducing estimated overall U.S. payment system costs by $1.16 billion in 2010. Payment collection times and associated float fell dramatically for collecting banks and payees with consequent additional savings in firm working capital costs of perhaps $1.37 billion and indebted consumer benefits of $0.64 billion.     

After-Tax Bond Yields When Tax and Coupon Payments Are Not Simultaneous

Typical after-tax bond yield-to-maturity calculations do not accurately reflect the timing of tax payments for the cash basis tax payer. The best of the methods gives reasonable yield estimates when the first coupon payment date is around May 15. As payment dates vary from May 15, bond values are affected by tax deferrals relating solely to the non-simultaneity of coupon interest and tax payments. These valuation effects, which are not measured by conventional bond models, can be significant, as demonstrated by model simulation and empirical tests which show that the bond market does price the coupon timing tax deferrals predicted by the model.     

Prediction of outstanding payments in a Poisson cluster model

We consider a simple Poisson cluster model for the payment numbers and the corresponding total payments for insurance claims arriving in a given year. Due to the Poisson structure one can give reasonably explicit expressions for the prediction of the payment numbers and total payments in future periods given the past observations of the payment numbers. One can also derive reasonably explicit expressions for the corresponding prediction errors. In the (a, b) class of Panjer's claim size distributions, these expressions can be evaluated by simple recursive algorithms. We study the conditions under which the predictions are asymptotically linear as the number of past payments becomes large. We also demonstrate that, in other regimes, the prediction may be far from linear. For example, a staircase-like pattern may arise as well. We illustrate how the theory works on real-life data, also in comparison with the chain ladder method.     

银行信贷首付约束与中国房地产价格研究

本文引入银行信贷的首付约束,建立了带有房地产部门的动态随机一般均衡模型,为分析首付约束与房地产价格关系提供了一个可操作的框架。通过和实际经济比较表明,构建的模型对中国经济和房地产价格波动有较好的解释力。本文得到了首付约束冲击对房地产价格的动态影响过程,研究证实首付约束的正向冲击不仅抬高了房地产价格,而且冲击的持久性更强;同时首付约束的正向冲击还放大了房地产价格对货币政策冲击和产出冲击的脉冲响应。     

Cost reductions in electronic payments: The roles of consolidation,economies of scale,and technical change

Unfettered nationwide bank branching raises the issue of whether consolidation of banks’ “back-office” operations, such as their payment processing, reduces operating costs. Whether centralized processing of payments reduces costs depends on the size and range of scale economies, the relative prices of data processing and telecommunication inputs, and changes in technology in addition to the number of sites operated. While consolidating payment operations into fewer sites may reduce average data processing costs, those cost savings may be more than offset by associated increases in telecommunications expenses. To investigate the potential effects of consolidation on future banking operations, we look at the experience of the Federal Reserve in consolidating its Fedwire electronic funds transfer operation over 1979 to 1996. Previous research suggested that scale economies in Fedwire payment processing were minimal and that the observed declines in average Fedwire production costs were largely attributable to technical advance. Our estimates suggest more nearly the opposite. We find that the Fedwire funds transfer operation exhibited large scale economies but little technical advance beyond that already embodied in the technology-adjusted input prices of data processing and telecommunication inputs. We also find that the consolidation of Fedwire into fewer offices contributed around one-fourth of the overall reduction in Fedwire average cost.     

地区公共服务供给与转移支付减贫效应研究-基于多维贫困分析框架

从宏观与微观相结合的角度,考察宏观上一个地区的公共服务供给能力是否会影响到转移支付的减贫效果.从多维贫困的研究视角出发,利用CHNS数据库考察了个人特征和家庭特征对贫困的影响;在此基础上利用分层模型将地区公共服务供给能力这种宏观因素和微观因素相结合,探究了不同公共服务供给能力对转移支付减贫效应的影响,同时也与收入贫困框架下的结果进行对比分析.结果显示:就多维贫困来讲,地区公共服务供给能力高的地区转移支付减贫效应有加强效果;转移支付对收入贫困的改善则不受地区公共服务水平的制约.     

Banks’ intraday liquidity management during operational outages: Theory and evidence from the UK payment system

We investigate how settlement banks in the United Kingdom’s large-value payment system deal with intraday liquidity and operational risk. In particular, we are interested in payments behaviour towards a bank that is, for operational reasons, unable to make but able to receive payments. If other banks did not sufficiently monitor their outgoing payments, these operational shocks could impact the entire payment system because the affected bank could absorb liquidity from the system. Our game-theoretic model predicts that only early in the day, when they are uncertain about the payment instructions they might have to execute, banks stop sending payments to a counterparty which is unable to make payments. Using a non-parametric method, we find that this prediction is supported by the data, implying that banks effectively contain the disruption caused by the operational outage: payment flows between healthy banks remain unaffected.     

Illiquidity in the Interbank Payment System Following Wide‐Scale Disruptions

We show how the interbank payment system can become illiquid following wide‐scale disruptions. Two forces are at play in such disruptions—operational problems and changes in participants’ behavior. If the disruption is large enough, hits a key geographic area, or hits a “too‐big‐to‐fail” participant, then the smooth processing of payments can break down, and central bank intervention might be required to reestablish the socially efficient equilibrium. The paper provides a theoretical framework to analyze the effects of events such as the September 11 attack. In addition, the model can be reinterpreted to analyze shocks to fundamentals that affect the parameters of the intraday liquidity management game. We demonstrate this by showing how processing behavior changed in response to heightened credit risk at the time of the Lehman Brothers failure.