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...

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...

The No Surcharge Rule (NSR) prevents merchants from charging more to consumers who pay by card versus other means ("cash"). We consider a payment network facing local monopolist merchants that serve two consumer groups, card users and cash users. Unlike in prior work, transaction quantities are...

Using a simple model of two-sided markets, we show that, in the social optimum, platform pricing leads to an inherent cost recovery problem. This result is driven by the positive externality of participation that users on either side of the market exert on the opposite side. The contribution of...

In this article, we construct a model to study competing payment networks, where networks offer differentiated products in terms of benefits to consumers and merchants. We study market equilibria for a variety of market structures: duopolistic competition and cartel, symmetric and asymmetric...

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...

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...

While the "cashless society" has not yet fully become a reality, payment choices by consumers and merchants have been moving the U.S. economy in that direction slowly and steadily over the past five decades. In this study, a companion paper to Garcia-Swartz (2006a) in this volume, we lay 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...

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...