Carbó, Chakravorti, and Rodriguez study the impact of lowering interchange fees on consumer and merchant adoption and usage along with bank revenues during a ten-year period in Spain using bank-level data. Using cutting-edge econometric techniques, they are able to test two-sided market model predictions about payment card pricing policies. They...
In his testimony, Bob Chakravorti elaborated on the following areas: first, the state of the economic literature on the costs and benefits of capital regulation; second, the enormous changes that we have seen post-crisis in the bank capital regulatory landscape and the ensuing changes to the quality and quantity of...
The key questions that Chakravorti asks in this book chapter are: (1) How is the payment system evolving? (2) What are the economic forces driving the adoption of new payment instruments? (3) Would recent developments in the payment system limit the central bank from conducting monetary policy? He argues that...
In this article, Chakravorti and Lubasi conclude that prepaid applications potentially provide a more cost-effective means to transfer funds when: 1) recipients of funds do not have transactions accounts; 2) disbursers of funds do not have access to the recipient’s transactions accounts, or 3) the disbursers of funds need to...
Businesses, both small and large, are adopting new technologies to automate and reduce the exchange of paper documents in their transaction flows. However, more than 80% of payments between businesses are still made with paper checks. As the exchange of information along the supply chain becomes increasingly electronic, it raises...
In this article, Chakravorti and McHugh address why consumers, merchants, and financial institutions are reluctant to embrace electronic payments even though electronic payment networks, such as the credit card and automated clearinghouse (ACH) networks, have existed for more than 25 years. While most Internet-based transactions are primarily processed via credit...
Chakravorti and Roson construct a model to study competing payment networks, where networks offer differentiated products in terms of benefits to consumers and merchants. We study market equilibria for a variety of market structures: duopolistic competition and cartel, symmetric and asymmetric networks, and alternative assumptions about consumer preferences. We find...