Financial services

• Why Do Shoppers Use Cash? Evidence from Shopping Diary Data

  Staff Working Paper 2012-24 Naoki Wakamori, Angelika Welte

  Recent studies find that cash remains a dominant payment choice for small-value transactions despite the prevalence of alternative means of payment such as debit and credit cards. For policy makers an important question is whether consumers truly prefer using cash or merchants restrict card usage.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Bank notes, Econometric and statistical methods, Financial services JEL Code(s): C, C2, D, D1, G, G2

• Consumer Bankruptcy and Information

  Staff Working Paper 2012-18 Jason Allen, H. Evren Damar, David Martinez-Miera

  We analyze the relationship between the intensity of banks’ use of soft-information and household bankruptcy patterns. Using a unique data set on the universe of Canadian household bankruptcies, we document that bankruptcy rates are higher in markets where the collection of soft, or qualitative locally gathered information, is the weakest.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial institutions, Financial services JEL Code(s): D, D4, G, G2