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Discussion Paper
Consumer behavior and payment choice : 2006 conference summary
This paper summarizes the proceedings of the second Consumer Behavior and Payment Choice conference, held at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston on July 25?27, 2006. These conferences are unique in featuring the collaboration of two groups of payments experts ? the private-sector payments industry on the one hand, and the academic, research, and policymaking communities on the other ? to stimulate more research and understanding of consumer payment behavior. The central focus of this second conference was learning more about the numerous consumer payments data sources that are available ? but ...
Discussion Paper
The 2009 survey of consumer payment choice
This paper presents results of the 2009 Survey of Consumer Payment Choice (SCPC), along with revised 2008 SCPC data. In 2009, the average U.S. consumer held 5.0 of the nine payment instruments available, including cash, and used 3.8 of them during a typical month. Between the 2008 and 2009 surveys, a period that includes the trough of the latest recession, consumers significantly increased their use of cash and close substitutes for cash, such as money orders and prepaid cards. At the same time, consumers reduced their use of credit cards and (to a lesser extent) debit cards, as well as ...
Working Paper
Job creation, job destruction, and the real exchange rate
This paper contributes to an understanding of internationally generated adjustment costs by demonstrating a statistically significant and economically relevant effect of the real exchange rate on job creation and job destruction in U.S. manufacturing industries over the period 1973 to 1993. The responsiveness of these gross job flows to the real exchange rate reflects pervasive heterogeneity with respect to international conditions across firms, even within narrowly defined industries. We document this heterogeneity and show that the responsiveness of job flows to movements in the real ...
Working Paper
Input and output inventories
This paper builds and estimates a new model of firm behavior that includes decisions to order, use, and stock input materials in a stage-of-fabrication environment with either gross production or value added technology. The model extends the traditional linear-quadratic model of output (finished goods) inventories by incorporating delivery and usage of input materials plus input inventory investment - features which largely have been ignored in the literature. Stylized facts indicate that input inventories are empirically more important than output inventories, especially in business cycle ...
Discussion Paper
An economic analysis of the 2010 proposed settlement between the Department of Justice and credit card networks
In 2010, the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a lawsuit against the credit card networks American Express, MasterCard, and Visa for alleged antitrust violations. We evaluate the extent to which the recently proposed settlement between the DOJ and Visa and MasterCard (henceforth, "Proposed Settlement") is likely to achieve its central objective: "?to allow Merchants to attempt to influence the General Purpose [Credit] Card or Form of Payment Customers select by providing choices and information in a competitive market." In word and spirit, the Proposed Settlement represents a significant ...
Discussion Paper
Summary of the workshop on Consumer Behavior and Payment Choice
This paper summarizes and outlines some interesting issues that arose during a recent workshop on Consumer Behavior and Payment Choice, hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston?s Emerging Payments Research Group (EPRG) on July 25, 2008. Topics addressed are the consumer adoption of new payment technologies, credit card debt management, payment card surcharges, and involuntary bank account closures.
Report
The 2012 diary of consumer payment choice
This paper describes the results, content, and methodology of the 2012 Diary of Consumer Payment Choice (DCPC), the first edition of a survey that measures payment behavior through the daily recording of U.S. consumers? spending by type of payment instrument. A diary makes it possible to collect detailed information on individual payments, including dollar amount, device (if any) used to make the payment (computer, mobile phone, etc.), and payee type (business, person, government). This edition of the DCPC included about 2,500 participants and was conducted in October 2012. During that month, ...
Report
The 2011 and 2012 Surveys of Consumer Payment Choice
In 2012, the number of consumer payments did not change significantly from 2010 as the economy settled into steady expansion following the financial crisis and recession. After increasing by 28 percent from 2008 to 2010, cash payments by consumers fell back by 10 percent from 2010 to 2012, while the share of cash payments dropped for a third straight year to 26.8 percent. However, the number and dollar value of cash withdrawals and the dollar value of cash holdings by consumers increased in 2012. Credit and charge card payments by consumers, which declined in 2009, rebounded further, ...
Journal Article
Role of firms in job creation and destruction in U.S. manufacturing
Research in recent years has documented extensively the fact that labor markets are characterized by large and pervasive flows of jobs among places of employment. However, virtually none of this research pertains to the role of the firm and its decisions in determining job creation and destruction. Previous research and data-gathering efforts have focused on employment at individual physical locations called establishments, or plants. This neglect leaves fundamental questions regarding the role of firms unanswered. Job reallocation occurring within firms may have very different causes and ...
Working Paper
Gross job flows and firms
This paper extends the work of Dunne, Roberts, and Samuelson [3] and Davis, Haltiwanger, and Schuh [2] on gross job flows among manufacturing plants. Gross job creation, destruction, and reallocation have been shown to be important in understanding the birth, growth, and death of plants, and the relation of plant life cycles to the business cycle. However, little is known about job flows between firms or how job flows among plants occur within firms (corporate restructuring). We use information on company organization from the Longitudinal Research Database (LRD) to investigate the ...