Cash is the preferred method of payment for small value transactions generally less than $25. We provide insight to this finding with a new theoretical model that characterizes and compares consumers' costs of paying with cash to paying with cards for each transaction. Our novel method accounts...

Estimation of the quantile model, especially with a large data set, can be computationally burdensome. This paper proposes using the Gaussian approximation, also known as quantile coupling, to estimate a quantile model. The intuition of quantile coupling is to divide the original observations...

Changes in survey mode (e.g., online, offline) may influence the values of survey responses, and may be particularly problematic when comparing repeated cross-sectional surveys. This paper identifies mode effects by correcting for both unit non-response and sampling selection using the sample...

This research aims to empirically analyze the spatial distribution of bank-branch networks in Canada. We study the market structure (both industrial and geographic concentrations) within the networks' own or adjacent postal areas. Our empirical framework considers branch density (the ratio of...

Constructing a novel micro-geographic individual-level data set, we study the relevance of shoe-leather costs on cash withdrawals. An unexplored issue in the literature is the consistent estimation of the marginal effect of travel distance on withdrawals when a fraction of unobserved withdrawals...

This paper proposes a method for estimating the joint distribution of two or more variables when only their marginal distributions and the distribution of their aggregates are observed. Nonparametric identification is achieved by modelling dependence using a latent commonfactor structure....

I investigate the impact of contactless credit cards (CTCs) on cash use in Canada, using panel data between 2010 and 2017. I show that ignoring unobserved heterogeneity would lead to overstating the impact of CTCs on cash usage in a linear model. Using finite mixture modelling, I provide...

Using data from Canada and the United States, we quantify consumers' net pecuniary cost of using cash, credit cards, and debit cards for purchases across income cohorts. The net cost includes fees paid to financial institutions, rewards received from credit or debit card issuers, and the...

Mobile phones are ubiquitous around the world, making them obvious conduits for innovative payment technologies, or mobile payments. In Canada, five out of six adults regularly use a mobile phone. However, they have not started to use mobile payments at the same rate as other payment...

This paper uses discrete-choice models to quantify the role of consumer socioeconomic characteristics, payment instrument attributes, and transaction features on the probability of using cash, debit card, or credit card at the point-of-sale. We use the Bank of Canada 2009 Method of Payment...