This paper documents the clear change of view, which has taken place in Australia over the past three decades or so, concerning the relevance of the current account deficit for policy. Historical experience under a fixed exchange rate regime suggested that large persistent deficits were...

The depression of the 1890s in Australia was associated with the collapse of the banking system, whereas problems in the financial system during the 1930s depression were far less severe. This is despite the fact that the initial macroeconomic shock during the 1930s depression was at least as...

This paper draws on a survey of consumers' willingness to pay surcharges to use debit cards and credit cards, rather than cash. Just as the price a consumer is willing to pay for a good or service is indicative of the value he/she places on that item, the willingness to pay a surcharge to use a...

Currency counterfeiting is costly for society. Law enforcement agencies allocate substantial resources to deter, detect and prosecute counterfeiting operations, households and businesses suffer a direct loss to counterfeiters and undertake costly prevention measures, and central banks spend...

Tiering occurs when an institution does not participate directly in the central payment system but instead settles its payments through an agent. A high level of tiering can be a significant issue for payment system regulators because of the increased credit and concentration risk. This paper...

Links between central counterparties (CCPs) enable participants to clear positions in any linked CCP without needing to maintain multiple CCP memberships. While links enable exposure to be reduced by allowing netting across CCPs, CCPs become exposed to one another through the possibility of a...

The Reserve Bank of Australia's third Survey of Consumers' Use of Payment Methods was conducted in November 2013. The survey used a diary and end-of-survey questionnaire to collect data on the use of cash, cards and a range of other payment methods, both at the point of sale and via remote...

This paper is the second of two companion pieces. In the first we developed a model of competition between payment systems which extends that of Chakravorti and Roson (2006). Here we turn to the results which can be obtained from the Chakravorti and Roson model, from our extension of it, and...

This paper is the first of two companion pieces examining competition between payment systems. Here we develop a model of competing platforms which generalises that considered by Chakravorti and Roson (2006). In particular, our model allows for fully endogenous multi-homing on both the merchant...

Among the reforms to over-the-counter (OTC) derivative markets since the global financial crisis is a commitment to collateralise counterparty exposures and to clear standardised contracts via central counterparties (CCPs). The reforms aim to reduce interconnectedness and improve counterparty...