Though checks' popularity is now waning in favor of electronic payments, checks were, for much of the twentieth century, the most widely used noncash payment method in the United States. How did such a relatively inefficient form of payment become so dominant? This article traces the historical...

Though checks' popularity is now waning in favor of electronic payments, checks were, for much of the twentieth century, the most widely used noncash payment method in the United States. How did such a relatively inefficient form of payment become so dominant? This article traces the historical...

This paper attempts to quantify the benefits associated with operating a liquidity-saving mechanism (LSM) in Fedwire, the large-value payment system of the Federal Reserve. Calibrating the model of Martin and McAndrews (2008), we find that potential gains are large compared to the likely cost of...

This submission discusses implications for the quality and safety of financial markets of proposed rules implementing the market-making provisions of section 13 of the Bank Holding Company Act, commonly known as the “Volcker Rule.” The proposed rules1 have been described by the Office of the...

This paper uses a toy financial system to study systemic risk in scale-free interbank networks. Networks are produced according to a fitness algorithm, combined with a representation of the balance sheets of the banks. Our generating processes for interbank networks are designed in a way to...

Today, the problem facing the United States is not whether cryptocurrencies are money or “thin air,” Iran's nuclear ambition, or COVID-19 induced recession; it is China's fast acceleration in becoming a game changer in the world order that the U.S. has dominated for more than a century....

The propagation of high-magnitude crises since the late 1990s have cost over $30 trillion and pushed about one percent of the world population into poverty. In the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis, the worst financial catastrophe of the 21st century, accelerated the speed of money's...

Peer-to-peer lending marketplaces are a phenomenon in great expansion in the USA and Europe. These Online platforms build an example of two-sided market as they try to attract and match lenders and borrowers, while facing the trade-off between increasing the volume of intermediated transactions...

This paper analyzes a group of 755 firms, with aggregate indebtedness of US$6.2 trillion, to assess the solvency risks and liquidity needs facing the U.S. corporate sector based on projections of net income, availability and cost of funding, and debt servicing flows under different stress test...

We show that decentralized privately created money with unstable values can hinder the traded, more transaction-friction sensitive, sector of the economy. We do so in the context of the NationalBanking Act of 1864 in the United States that created a new federally-regulated, fully-backed currency...