Obtaining the best possible estimates of consumer expenditures is crucial to proper construction of consumption data and applied economic research on consumer behavior. Measuring consumer expenditures well is complex and difficult. The challenges, which are manifest in discrepancies between...

The Federal Reserve Financial Services Strategic Plan for 2012 - 2016 specifies five main policy goals for the next few years. The second of its goals is to "Maintain public confidence in the end-to-end safety and security of clearing and settlement systems." Indeed, in each annual Survey of...

Today's consumer has access to more payment instruments than consumers of just a few years ago, as newer electronic payments are penetrating an established payments market, while older methods, such as cash and checks, remain important payment alternatives. As the number of available payment...