Abstract We build a framework to understand the effects of regulatory interventions in credit markets, such as caps on interest rates. focus card market, which we observe US consumers borrowing at high and very dispersed rates despite receiving many offers. Our includes two main features account for these patterns: endogenous effort examining offers product differentiation. calibration suggests...

MODELING AND ANALYZING INTEGRATED POLICIES Michael McDougall Carl A. Gunter and Rajeev Alur Smart card technology has advanced to the point where computerized cards the size of credit cards can hold multiple interacting programs. These multi-applet cards are beginning to be exploited by business and government in security, transport and financial applications. We conduct a thorough analysis of ...

For valuable comments on earlier drafts, I thank Omri Ben-Shahar, Rebecca Eisenberg, Frances Foster, John Haley, Dan Keating, Atsushi Kinami, Rick Lempert, Lynn LoPucki, Bob Rasmussen, Hiroo Sono, Elizabeth Warren, Jay Westbrook, and Mark West. I also received useful feedback from presentations of all or part of this paper at the Conference on Japanese Law in the 21st Century at the University ...

The initial design of a vertical magnetoresistive head in a hand-held wand for reading magnetically encoded price tags and credit cards is discussed. The performance of the head (e.g., resolution, signal shape and amplitude, and signal-to-noise ratio) is analytically and experimentally evaluated as a function of the configuration of the sensor, head-to-medium interface, and sensor processing an...

We live life in the network. We check our e-mails regularly, make mobile phone calls from almost any location ... make purchases with credit cards ... [and] maintain friendships through online social networks. ... These transactions leave digital traces that can be compiled into comprehensive pictures of both individual and group behavior, with the potential to transform our understanding of ou...

When most cardholders swipe a card at a retailer to purchase goods and services, they are probably unaware of what happens behind the scenes between the time the card is swiped and when the merchant is finally paid. There is, however, a detailed set of arrangements between financial institutions that ensure that the merchant is paid and the cardholder’s account debited. Historically, these arra...

Despite growing evidence that many US households are liquidity constrained, there remains little consensus on the quantitative importance or nature of these constraints. This paper develops a new type of evidence on the impacts of consumer credit markets on behavior by examining household-level responses to an exogenous liquidity shock. A United States Supreme Court decision effectively deregul...

On December 14, 2001, the Payment Cards Center of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia held a workshop exploring retail credit risk modeling practices and evolving techniques. The workshop was led by Paul Calem, a senior economist at the Board of Governors, Division of Research and Statistics. Calem is currently involved in the Board's efforts supporting reforms to the international Basel C...