The paper examines a continuous-time delegated monitoring problem between competitive investors and an impatient bank monitoring a pool of long-term loans subject to Markovian “contagion.” Moral hazard induces a foreclosure bias unless the bank is compensated with the right...

We survey the limited data that exists concerning the cost of making/receiving a payment by banks, retailers, and other parties to a transaction. Since an electronic payment costs between one-third and onehalf that of a paper-based instrument, a country may save 1% of its GDP annually as it...

The goal of SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area) is to facilitate the emergence of a competitive, intra-European market by making cross-border payments as easy as domestic transactions. With cross-border inter-operability for electronic payments, card transactions will increasingly replace cash and...

Banks were substantially deregulated during the 1980s. This altered the cost-minimizing mix between deposit interest payments and operating expenses (capital and labor for branch convenience and “free” deposit services). Measured bank output was relatively unaffected by these changes. The...