Ever since the first general-purpose charge card debuted in the early 1950s, pundits have been predicting the "cashless society". Over fifty years later, we may finally be getting close to that vision. This study is the first to examine empirically the move toward a cashless society using a...

We discuss competition among payment card networks, and in particular how antitrust practitioners might approach questions of market definition and market power in these markets. Application of the hypothetical monopolist test to define markets, and the use of traditional metrics to measure...

The paper offers a roadmap to the current economic thinking concerning interchange fees. After describing the fundamental externalities inherent in payment systems and analysing merchant resistance to interchange fee increases and the associations' determination of this fee, it derives the...

Static demand models for homogeneous network goods give rise to fulfilled-expectations equilibrium demand (FEED) curves, which, contrary to normal demand curves, may be upward sloping at certain intervals. We analyze some, as yet unexplored, properties of the FEED curves. We spell out the...

This paper examines the diffusion of digital switching in 19 countries by specifying a model of technology choice and testing the significance of the implied determinants of adoption. The results are compared and contrasted with previous analyses of the adoption of digital switching within the...

Ongoing consolidation in the European airline industry poses a threat to second-tier hub cities in terms of losing hub status and long haul routes. As airlines merged in the USA, it was often more efficient to close a duplicating hub and concentrate resources on the stronger one. This paper...

This paper presents models that explain why merchants accept payment cards even when the fees they face exceed the transactional benefits they receive from a card transaction. The prevalent assumption merchants accept cards only when they earn positive net transactional benefits holds only for a...

Antitrust and regulatory concerns swirl around the payment cards industry, for understandable reasons: It is not atomistic; it has network characteristics; it involves two-sided markets; and its two prominent members Visa and MasterCard are network joint ventures of the banks that issue cards to...

With airport privatization and infrastructure expansion projects taking place in the liberalized European air transport market, airport and airline companies are critically reevaluating their vertical governance structures. This paper analyzes the comparative efficiency of vertical governance...

This paper presents new data on telecommunications reform for a cross section of countries. We measure telecommunications reform along two dimensions: entry barriers and regulatory independence. This data set is combined with a comprehensive set of performance, institutional and political data...