This paper empirically examines the effects of discriminatory fees on ATM investment and welfare, and considers the role of coordination in ATM investment between banks. Our main findings are that foreign fees tend to reduce ATM availability and (consumer) welfare, whereas surcharges positively...

A number of jurisdictions are considering imposing price caps on the interchange fees that card issuers receive from merchant acquirers when cardholders pay with their cards. Several have already done so. This paper examines the net impact of these price caps on consumers. The economics of...

Accurate assessments of bank deposit market power are essential for antitrust and monetary policy. Regulators and researchers have traditionally measured market power assuming all consumers consider every bank operating in a given geographic region. However, these measures are generally biased...

Using data on marginal interest rates of loan and deposit products by Spanish banks, we find that the level of interest rates on loans (deposits) across geographic markets decrease (increase) with the number of banks in each market, and that the level of interest rates on loans increases with...

Standard economics provides a well-understood framework of the competitive determinants of market prices that is now widely accepted for antitrust analysis. In “two-sidedmarkets,” where firms supply products demanded by two interrelated groups of consumers, these competitive forces operate...

We build a model of a financial intermediary, in the tradition of Diamond and Dybvig (1983), and show that allowing the intermediary to impose redemption fees or gates in a crisis - a form of suspension of convertibility - can lead to preemptive runs. In our model, a fraction of investors...

Payment networks typically differentiate their interchange fees (IFs) by setting a variety of sector-specific IFs for the same payment card. While the previous literature on IFs has focussed on the optimal level of IFs, this paper addresses the optimal structure of IFs, i.e. whether or not IF...

In this article we empirically analyze how the Tourist Test methodology affects the level of multilateral interchange fees (MIFs) for debit card payments over time. Using Dutch cost data for 2002 and 2009 we argue that this method leads to rising cost for merchants in the long run. The outcomes...