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Showing results 1 to 10 of approximately 41.
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Journal Article
Are we underestimating the gains from globalization for the United States?
Over the last three decades, trade has more than tripled the variety of international goods available to U.S. consumers. Although an increased choice of goods clearly enhances consumer well-being, standard national measures of welfare and prices do not assign a value to variety growth. This analysis-the first effort to measure such gains-finds that the value to consumers of global variety growth in the 1972-2001 period was roughly $260 billion.
Journal Article
Survey of consumer finances, 1983
Journal Article
Texas' CAC members
Journal Article
Mobile Banking Use and Consumer Readiness to Benefit from Faster Payments
The U.S. payments industry is currently implementing faster payments that will enable consumers and businesses to send and receive payments almost instantly at any time of day, any day of the year. Mobile banking in particular may allow consumers to realize the full benefits of faster payments. As a result, a consumer’s use of mobile banking is a good indicator of their readiness to benefit from faster payments.Fumiko Hayashi and Ying Lei Toh examine which consumer characteristics are associated with mobile banking use as well as what other factors may influence consumer readiness. They ...
Journal Article
Consumer confidence after September 11
The terrorist attacks on September 11 dealt a serious blow to the U.S. economy. The damage included the tragic loss of human life, massive property destruction, and disruptions to the travel and shipping industries. But immediately after the attacks, many observers also worried about the possible harm to business and consumer confidence. Although the effects on business confidence are hard to measure, regular surveys of households make it easier to assess the effects on consumer confidence. These surveys show that consumer confidence was surprisingly resilient.> Faced with this resilience, ...
Briefing
Rationalizing financial literacy policy
It is hard to argue against the need for greater financial literacy. But how can households learn to make better decisions and to what extent can public policy help?
Working Paper
Regulating two-sided markets: an empirical investigation
We study the effect of government encouraged or mandated interchange fee ceilings on consumer and merchant adoption and usage of payment cards in an economy where card acceptance is far from complete. We believe that we are the first to use bank- level data to study the impact of interchange fee regulation. We find that consumer and merchant welfare improved because of increased consumer and merchant adoption leading to greater usage of payment cards. We also find that bank revenues increased when interchange fees were reduced although these results are critically dependent on merchant ...
Working Paper
Consumer search, price dispersion, and international relative price volatility
This paper develops a model of consumer search consistent with the evidence of substantial price dispersion within countries. This model is used to study international relative price fluctuations. Consumer search frictions permit firms to price discriminate across markets based on the local wage of consumers. With price dispersion, the market price of a good does not measure its resource cost. This breaks the tight link between relative quantities and relative prices implied by most models. We show that volatile and persistent fluctuations in relative wages lead to volatile and persistent ...
Speech
The outlook for the economy
Presentation to Financial Executives International, San Francisco, CA, April 15, 2010
Journal Article
Variations in consumer sentiment across demographic groups
Consumer sentiment is one of the many macroeconomic indicators tracked by policymakers and the public. The aggregate numbers in consumer sentiment indexes, such as the University of Michigan's Index of Consumer Sentiment, conceal a wealth of demographic-specific information. The authors' findings suggest that index disaggregation by group matters because consumer sentiment varies systematically by demographic group.