Recent decisions by the Spanish national competition authority (TDC) mandate payment systems to include only two costs when setting their domestic multilateral interchange fees (MIF): a fixed processing cost and a variable cost for the risk of fraud. This artificial lowering of MIFs will not...

This is the English version of the annotaded presentation given at XI Encuentro Latinoamericano de Usuarios SWIFT (SWIFT users conference), ELUS 2006, “Creciendo en Competitividad”, Santiago de Chile, 3-5 July 2006. Given the importance of financial intermediation for the economy and the...

This paper provides a theory model of trade finance to explain the "great trade collapse." The model shows that, first, the riskiness of international transactions rises relative to domestic transactions during economic downturns, and second, the exclusive use of a letter of credit in...

This paper uses data from a firm with team production to investigate the association between workers’ productivity, risk aversion and preferred bonus scheme (team or individual). Standard economics make a strong prediction in this case. Workers persistently producing above the team average...

This paper aims to identify the likely source(s) of value that cryptocurrencies exhibit in the marketplace using cross sectional empirical data examining 66 of the most used such 'coins'. A regression model was estimated that points to three main drivers of cryptocurrency value: the aggregate...

With the purpose of measuring and monitoring systemic risk, some topological properties of the interbank exposures and the payments system networks are studied. We propose non-topological measures which are useful to describe the individual behavior of banks in both networks. The evolution of...