The geographic clustering of companies within an industry is often attributed to several agglomeration economies: intra-industry spillovers (benefits from proximity to firms in the same industry), inter-industry spillovers (benefits from proximity to firms in related industries), and spinoffs...

Merchants pay interchange fees to card issuers when they accept credit or debit cards as payment. Many merchants have complained that the fees far exceed issuers' costs for processing such transactions. In response to those complaints, Congress directed the Federal Reserve to impose a cap on...

Why do debit card networks base their fees on a percentage of transaction amounts when the marginal cost of executing a transaction does not vary by amount? Research suggests that this type of fee structure, a linear ad valorem fee, maximizes profits for card networks by allowing price...