Recent decisions by the Spanish national competition authority (TDC) mandate payment systems to include only two costs when setting their domestic multilateral interchange fees (MIF): a fixed processing cost and a variable cost for the risk of fraud. This artificial lowering of MIFs will not...

Most US credit card holders revolve high-interest debt, often combined with substantial (i) asset accumulation by retirement, and (ii) low-rate liquid assets. Hyperbolic discounting can resolve only the former puzzle (Laibson et al., 2003). Bertaut and Haliassos (2002) proposed an...

The increased fragility of the banking industry has generated growing concern about the risks associated with the payment systems. Although in most industrial countries different interbank payment systems coexist, little is really known about their propierties in terms of risk and efficiency. We...

We model systemic risk in an interbank market. Banks face liquidity needs as consumers are uncertain about where they need to consume. Interbank credit lines allow to cope with these liquidity shocks while reducing the cost of maintaining reserves. However, the interbank market exposes the...