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...
Bob Chakravorti discusses surcharging and honor-all-cards rules for payment cards. Generally, merchants charge the same price regardless of the type of payment instrument used to make purchases. In many jurisdictions, merchants are not allowed to add a surcharge for payment card transactions because of legal (some states in the U.S...
In this book chapter, Chakravorti considers linkages between consumer payments and credit. Payors, those that make payments, and payees, those that receive payments, choose among various payment instruments based on their preferences toward convenience, risk, and cost. According to a recent U.S. survey, the usage of payment cards is increasing...
Chakravorti and To construct a two-period model to study the interactions among consumers, merchants, and a card issuer. The model yields the following results. First, if the issuer's cost of funds is not too high and the merchant's profit margin is sufficiently high, in every equilibrium of our model the...
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 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...