On the basis of anecdotes centered on the alleged "circuitous routing of checks," researchers focusing on the pre-Fed check-clearing system have usually argued that it was inefficient. In this paper we study a 1910 check remittance register from the State National Bank of Bloomington,...

This paper examines the contribution of 3G and 4G cellular technologies to the smartphone revolution. It relies on quasi-natural experiments in which these technologies were launched at different times and deployed at different rates across countries while the availability of handsets, operating...

There appears to be universal agreement that antitrust policy should "protect competition, not competitors" and that consumer welfare is the fundamental standard for evaluating competitive effects. There is considerable debate, however, about how to implement those principles in practice when...

Section 1075 of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act requires the Federal Reserve Board to regulate the debit card industry including the interchange fee banks and credit unions receive from merchants. This paper reviews the arguments in support of this regulation put forward by Senator Durbin, who proposed...

This volume collects a series of essays that I have written over the last decade on multi-sided platform businesses that create value by providing products that enable two or more different types of customers to get together, find each other, and exchange value. Part I presents background pieces...

The cost to merchants of taking payment on debit cards declined by more than $7 billion annually as a result of the Durbin Amendment to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, while the effective cost to issuers of providing debit card services to consumers...

This volume consists of seven articles on the economics and regulation of interchange fees. All rely on the multi-sided platform framework. The first two chapters examine whether there is a market failure in setting interchange fees and present principles for considering correction to a market...