Our legacy financial infrastructure has both limited growth opportunities and contributed to the inequality of opportunities. Around the world, 1.7 billion are unbanked. Small businesses, even those with a banking relationship, often must rely on high-cost financing, such as credit cards,...

Using a unique dataset based on the results of a survey of almost 280 Italian banks (Regional Bank Lending Survey), this paper presents early evidence on the digital transformation of the Italian banking sector over the period 2007-2018. By building a composite indicator that measures the...

The revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2) mandated every bank in the European Union (EU) to provide application programming interfaces (APIs) that allow every licensed company (as well as other banks) to access information gathered on customers’ payment accounts and then order payment...

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System has engaged the public in its consideration of a USD Central Bank Digital Currency (USD CBDC). The Board has framed USD CBDC issues principally around payment market access and efficiency, tending to overlook questions CBDC raises about the...

Concluding thoughts and outlook for the future of the technologies affording digital currencies, cryptocurrencies, blockchain and smart contracts. For Chapter 1 (Introduction), see https://ssrn.com/abstract=3135021. For Chapter 2 (Means of Exchange: Ever-present Competition), see...

We analyze competition in the consumer lending segment between banks and financial technology (or “fintech”) companies (or “fintechs”) as well as giant technology (or “bigtech”) companies (or “bigtechs”) providing alternative credit. We use a database combining banklevel...

This paper studies how creditors behave under costly collateral enforcement. I exploit quasi-experimental variation in foreclosure costs generated from Maine's 2014 Greenleaf judgement. I estimate that that the foreclosure rate dropped by over 23%. Furthermore, I find that borrowers did not...

In this chapter we discuss the use of blockchain technology for enterprises, including governments. 7.1. Distributed database: what is it and what for? 7.2. Limitation of Bitcoin’s blockchain for enterprise use. 7.3. Consensus for permissioned distributed systems. 7.4. Enterprise blockchain...

In this chapter we discuss smart contracts and functionalities they afford, especially in combination with blockchain. 6.1. The rise of Ethereum. 6.1.1. History. 6.1.2. Ethereum is “different”. 6.2. Smart contracts. 6.2.1. Smart contracts on Ethereum. 6.2.2. What do smart contracts need a...

Using comprehensive credit bureau data, we document that consumers who borrow from marketplace lending (MPL) platforms have lower credit scores and higher default rates in the long run relative to observably similar applicants for bank loans. This underperformance of MPL borrowers is more...