This paper is the first in the literature to examine the determinants of US credit card penalty fees. Many critics of credit card fees - including a number of US Senators - have argued that credit card penalty fees reflect banks' market share. Using a unique data set we find that fees are...

Recent research finds that poorer individuals make financial mistakes when the decisions are difficult and rare. We examine who makes financial mistakes involving decisions that are easier and more frequent – specifically, the inadvertent failure to pay monthly credit card balances when...

This paper uses a unique database to test the effect of ATM surcharges on larger versus smaller banks. Only nonbank ("foreign") users of ATMs pay ATM surcharges. Customers thus face incentives to switch accounts from smaller banks to larger banks in order to avoid high ATM surcharges. We find...

This paper provides a critical survey of the large and diffuse literature on credit cards, debit cards and ATMs. We argue that because there are still many outstanding issues and questions about the pricing, use and substitutability of these payment mechanisms, that there are significant further...