The provision of retail payment services is complex with many participants engaging in a series of interrelated bilateral transactions and subject to large economies of scale and scope along with strong adoption, usage and network externalities. This makes sound public policy difficult. We focus on three types of market interventions...
Bolt and Chakravorti discuss different types of market interventions by public authorities in retail payment markets. They concentrate on three types of market interventions. First, they analyze the impact of removing pricing restrictions placed on merchants that prevent them from setting different prices based on the payment instrument used to...
Bolt and Chakravorti investigate the research on electronic payment systems. The rapid growth in the use of electronic payment instruments, especially payment cards, is a striking feature of most modern economies. Payment data indicate that strong scale economies exist for electronic payments. Payment costs will decrease through the consolidation of...
In his presentation to Bank of Mexico economists and payment experts, Chakravorti presented an update of economic models that consider various forms of regulation.
Bolt and Chakravorti study the ability of banks and merchants to influence the consumer's payment instrument choice. Consumers participate in payment card networks to insure themselves against three types of shocks - income, theft, and their merchant match. Merchants choose which payment instruments to accept based on their production costs...
Bolt and Chakravorti explain how a payment network operates. Having established the payment network framework, they discuss the costs and benefits of providing and using payment cards relative to various other types of payment instruments. Next, they review the key contributions to the theoretical payment card literature. They consider papers...
Chakravorti and Jankowski summarize the 2005 Chicago Payments conference. The migration to more efficient payment mechanisms is affected by innovations, incentives, and regulations. While advances in technology have yielded numerous payment method alternatives, many have not been widely adopted. A Chicago Fed conference explored why certain payment innovations have been...
Chakravorti and Kobor provide a framework to study the creation and adoption of innovations by payment providers and processors. The authors identify several motivating factors for banks and nonbanks to invest in payment innovations. In addition, they discuss the evolutionary process of payment innovations from inception to commoditization and recognize...
Chakravorti and Emmons model side payments in a competitive credit‐card market. If competitive retailers absorb the cost of accepting credit cards by charging a higher goods price to everyone, then someone must subsidize convenience users of credit cards to prevent them from defecting to merchants who do not accept cards...