Debit cards are overtaking credit cards as the most prevalent form of electronic payment at the point of sale, yet the determinants of a ubiquitous consumer choice - "debit or credit?" - have received relatively little scrutiny. Several stylized facts suggest that debit-card use is driven by...

The way people pay for goods and services is changing dramatically, but little data and research on consumer behavior and payment choice are publicly available. This paper describes the results of a survey of payment behavior and attitudes taken by Federal Reserve employees in 2004. Major...

This paper summarizes and outlines some interesting issues that arose during a recent workshop on Consumer Behavior and Payment Choice, hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston's Emerging Payments Research Group (EPRG) on July 25, 2008. Topics addressed are the consumer adoption of new...

The paper investigates the role of the real exchange rate in international risk sharing relationships. The real exchange rate introduces a wedge between real marginal utilities of consumption in different countries and this wedge plays a prominent role in a number of new theories of...

This article assesses economic growth in the context of consumer saturation. We show that consumer based economies tend to suffer from demand saturation after an initial and prolonged period of growth. However, structural demand saturation irrevocably triggers a Minsky-type super cycle that is...

Payment transformation has generated a shift from paper to cards and electronic payments in the United States, but there is also a large degree of heterogeneity among consumers in how they pay. We present factors affecting consumer payment behavior, show data on how consumers pay in the United...

This study uses the 2009 Financial Capability Study dataset to examine the association between individuals' financial literacy and their costly borrowing decisions. The results indicate that financial literacy is indeed negatively associated with costly borrowing behaviors. Other factors such as...

Conventional wisdom asserts that $100 bills are often associated with crime and foreign cash holdings, leading some commentators to call for their elimination; in light of this view, it is useful to examine the legal, domestic use of cash. This report uses new data from the 2012 Diary of...

For the first five months of 2018, household savings moved up merely by 1.3% which is the bottom low for the last several years. Meanwhile, retail lending has been demonstrating an upward trend. The public borrows significantly more than deposits

Economic growth should be supplemented by an efficient payment and settlement system. Many attempts have been made to improve the efficiency of payment and settlement system in India. Especially the effort has been in terms of promoting digital economy. But the stickiness to payments through...