This paper documents the recent performance of European electronic purses. It presents data on 16 such schemes, and compares their penetration and usage rates. These rates are shown to differ substantially. A number of schemes are doing increasingly well and in all probability are here to stay....

Despite an international consensus on the importance to limit State aid spending, large amounts of resources are still devoted to a wide variety of subsidies to firms. A sizable literature studies the relationship between general government spending and the proximity of elections, mostly...

Despite questions surrounding their reliability, much of the financial literacy literature continues to rely on simple metrics - without checking whether using an alternative might yield different findings. The present paper does just that: we replicate two prior studies and substitute the...