According to a study featured in the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland's 2005 Annual Report, differences in state income levels can be explained largely by two factors: innovation and workforce skills. The study's findings suggest that increasing a region's knowledge base should be a primary...

An analysis of the contribution of scale economies, technological change, and falling input prices to the absolute reduction in the real processing costs of an ACH transfer over the 1979-94 period.

A summary of the theory behind airline deregulation, and a look at the future evolution of the airline industry as it adapts to its new environment.

Using a model developed to examine the determinants of air fares, the authors discuss the relationship between airline industry competitiveness and fare increases.

An examination of the cost of providing check-processing services at 47 Federal Reserve offices between 1983:1Q and 1990:IVQ, demonstrating how the Fed's unit cost measures can be decomposed into separate effects related to differences in cost efficiency, output mix, input prices, and...

Check 21 legislation has enabled the check clearing system to transform from paper to electronics, and much more rapidly than some had predicted. As a result of competition with other payment methods, check use has been declining since the mid-1990s, but because of the rapid adoption of...

In this paper, we analyze the service provided by the 13 largest U.S. passenger airlines to the 100 most populous U.S. metropolitan areas in 1989. We classify the route systems by their nature and geographic scope using a variety of measures based on route-level data. We then identify individual...