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Journal Article
Efficiency and technical progress in check processing
An examination of the cost of providing check-processing services at 47 Federal Reserve offices between 1983:1Q and 1990:IVQ, demonstrating how the Fed's unit cost measures can be decomposed into separate effects related to differences in cost efficiency, output mix, input prices, and environmental variables.
Working Paper
Scale economies, scope economies, and technical change in Federal Reserve payment processing
In the past decade, the U.S. economy has witnessed a tremendous surge in the usage of electronic payment processing services and an increased importance of the firms that provide these services. The payments industry has also undergone changes in cost structure with the introduction of new technology. Unfortunately, data on the private provision of payment processing services are not available. However, the Federal Reserve provides similar services and collects data on its own provision of payments processing, offering an opportunity to gain insights into the cost structure of payments ...
Journal Article
What you should know about identity theft
Identity theft?appropriating someone else?s identity for illicit gain?is the fastest-growing financial crime. It can cause considerable financial losses, and cleaning up a trashed credit history can be time consuming and frustrating. This Economic Commentary examines the identity theft phenomenon?how it works, how lawmakers, regulators, and financial institutions are combating it, and what consumers can do to protect themselves.
Working Paper
TFP growth, change in efficiency, and technological progress in the U. S. airline industry: 1970 to 1981
An overview of the airline industry's early adaptations to deregulation using a best-practice cost function approach; measures cost efficiency and changes in total factor productivity growth for airlines in the 1970s and early 1980s and discusses how these findings relate to individual airline performance.
Journal Article
Labor productivity growth across states
Labor productivity growth, a measure of output per unit of work, is closely tied to gains in wages and living standards, and it provides a direct measure of a country?s competitive position over time. The same holds true for states. Since the last business cycle peak in 2000, states boosted their average labor productivity growth to 2.3 percent. In Ohio, this growth came as a result of modest output growth accompanied by sharp employment losses. Although this has been a painful transition for the Fourth District, solid productivity gains have made the remaining firms and workers more ...
Journal Article
Consumer financial privacy and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act
By requiring financial institutions to put adequate controls in place to secure consumers? confidential data and by clearly spelling out what rights consumers and financial institutions have, the 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act is a positive step toward ensuring consumer financial privacy. If there are no market imperfections, then competition may be relied on to efficiently sort out the competing interests of consumers and financial institutions. Alternatively, if there are market imperfections in the form of externalities, the Coase theorem suggests that the act, by clearly assigning property ...
Journal Article
Are we in a productivity boom? Evidence from multifactor productivity growth
Increased productivity could be the key to preserving robust, noninflationary GDP growth. But what is the best measure of productivity? This Economic Commentary explores the relationship between labor productivity and multifactor productivity, a measure that accounts for factors other than technological improvement. It concludes that MFP provides a better measure of productivity due solely to technical change.
Journal Article
The determinants of direct air fares to Cleveland: how competitive?
Using a model developed to examine the determinants of air fares, the authors discuss the relationship between airline industry competitiveness and fare increases.
Journal Article
The check is dead! Long live the check! A Check 21 update
Check 21 legislation has enabled the check clearing system to transform from paper to electronics, and much more rapidly than some had predicted. As a result of competition with other payment methods, check use has been declining since the mid-1990s, but because of the rapid adoption of electronic payment methods, checks are evolving and are unlikely to disappear anytime soon. Checks are still a convenient way to initiate some payments, and electronic processing has only made them more competitive with all types of electronic payments.
Working Paper
The determinants of airport hub locations, service, and competition
Although the airline industry has been studied extensively since passage of the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, relatively little effort has gone into examining how hub location affects the level of service and degree of competition found at airports in the system. To help close this gap, we investigate the geographic distribution of airline hub operations, the level of service, and the extent of competition at 112 major U.S. airports, extending previous work by Bauer (1987) and Butler and Huston (1989). Our key innovation is that we derive our measures of service and competition from ...