The purpose of this paper is to analyze how shocks propagate through a network of firms that borrow from, and lend to, each other in a trade credit chain, and to quantify the effects of financial contagion across firms. I develop a theoretical model of financial contagion, in which the default...

Forecasting based pricing of Weather Derivatives (WDs) is a new approach in valuation of contingent claims on nontradable underlyings. Standard techniques are based on historical weather data. Forward-looking information such as meteorological forecasts or the implied market price of risk (MPR)...

The paper investigates the reasons why person-to-person electronic funds transfers are still not very common in the United States compared with practices in many other countries. The paper also describes recent enhancements to online and mobile banking that provide account holders with low-cost...

Merchant fees and reward programs generate an implicit monetary transfer to credit card users from non-card (or cash) users because merchants generally do not set differential prices for card users to recoup the costs of fees and rewards. On average, each cash-using household pays $149 to...

In 2010, the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a lawsuit against the credit card networks American Express, MasterCard, and Visa for alleged antitrust violations. We evaluate the extent to which the recently proposed settlement between the DOJ and Visa and MasterCard (henceforth, Proposed...

Debit cards are overtaking credit cards as the most prevalent form of electronic payment at the point of sale, yet the determinants of a ubiquitous consumer choice - debit or credit? - have received relatively little scrutiny. Several stylized facts suggest that debit-card use is driven by...

Complementarity between performance pay and other organizational design elements has been argued to be one potential explanation for stark differences in the observed productivity gains from performance pay adoption. Using detailed data on internal organization for a nationally representative...

Debit cards are overtaking credit cards as the most prevalent form of electronic payment at the point of sale, yet the determinants of a ubiquitous consumer choice - "debit or credit?" - have received relatively little scrutiny. Several stylized facts suggest that debit-card use is driven by...

The paper investigates the reasons why person-to-person electronic funds transfers are still not very common in the United States compared with practices in many other countries. The paper also describes recent enhancements to online and mobile banking that provide account holders with low-cost...