In Ireland, there was a bank strike that led to a complete shut-down of the main part of the banking system from May to November 1970. The effects of this strike were surprisingly limited. This had led some observers to conclude that trade credit can easily substitute for bank deposits as a...

The period from the 1950s to the late 1970s saw an almost uniform decline of cash-to-GDP ratios in industrial countries. A closer look at the German payment system suggests that the factor causing such a change has been the shift towards cashless wage payments. In this period, in Germany, the...

The New Monetary Economics predicts that a low-transaction-cost world will be characterised by monetary separation. Current innovations in the payment system seem to bring us closer to such a moneyless world. However, market microstructure theory suggests that transaction costs will not fall to...