The substitution of noncash (check, giro, and credit and debit card) payments for cash transactions is difficult to gauge because there are no data series on the actual value or volume of cash transactions in any country.However, determining the degree of cash substitution is important because...

This paper discusses various theoretic concepts which play a role in assessing the public benefits of Target, the large value RTGS payment network operated by the Eurosystem. These concepts touch upon natural monopoly, network externalities, competition and contestability, as well as economies...

Target is a real time gross settlement (RTGS) large value payment network operated by European central banks that eliminates systemic risk. Euro1 is a privately operated delayed net settlement (DNS) network that reduces substantially systemic risk but does not eliminate it. This difference makes...

Banks supply payment services that underpin the smooth operation of the economy. To ensure an efficient payment system, it is important to maintain competition among payment service providers but data available to gauge the degree of competition are quite limited. We propose and implement a...

Payment scale economies affect banking costs, competition in payment services, and pricing. Our scale measure relates operating cost to physical measures of European banking "output", finding large economies. This differs from relating total cost to the value of balance sheet assets (the...

A general econometric model is developed and used to estimate the share of cash in consumer point-of-sale transactions in Norway over 1980-99. The share of cash fell from 90% during the 1980s to 50% in 1999, primarily due to debit card growth. Additional data from banks, stores, and elsewhere...

This paper demonstrates the importance of using a flexible cost function specification when analyzing economies of scale and estimating the cost effect of banking mergers. The inflexibility of the translog cost function is illustrated and results are compared to more flexible spline and Fourier...