Using data from the United States and Canada, we quantify consumers’ net pecuniary cost of using cash, credit cards, and debit cards for purchases across income cohorts. The net cost includes fees paid to financial institutions, rewards received from credit or debit card issuers, and the...

We use novel datasets from multiple sources to quantify U.S. and Canadian consumers’ net pecuniary costs of making payments at the point of sale across income cohorts. The net costs include merchants’ cost of accepting payments that is passed on to consumers as higher retail prices, payment...

We study how within-store price variation changes with inflation, and whether households exploit it to attenuate the inflation burden. We use micro price data for food products sold by 91 large multi-channel retailers in ten countries between 2018 and 2024. Measuring unit prices within narrowly...