IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/applec/v53y2021i6p703-718.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does the shadow economy mitigate the effect of cashless payment technology on currency demand? dynamic panel evidence

Author

Listed:
  • Paul Marmora
  • Brenden J. Mason

Abstract

Recent government attempts at reducing currency demand by promoting cashless payment technology, e.g., subsidies for point-of-sale terminals, have met with mixed success. In this paper, we argue that one reason is the shadow economy: as the size of the unrecorded economy grows, cashless payment technology has a weaker effect on the demand for cash. To test this hypothesis, we analyse a panel of 37 countries over the years 2004–2014 including data on point-of-sale terminals, financial cards in circulation, and the value of total card payments. Using the first principal component of these variables as a proxy for cashless payment technology, we find that a 1% increase in underground activity lowers the impact of cashless technology on the velocity of currency in circulation by 0.3%. This decrease is large enough that the average marginal effect of cashless technology on currency velocity is statistically insignificant for several high-shadow countries over the sample period. Overall, our results suggest that government subsidization of digital payment infrastructure will be ineffective when shadow markets are prevalent.

Suggested Citation

  • Paul Marmora & Brenden J. Mason, 2021. "Does the shadow economy mitigate the effect of cashless payment technology on currency demand? dynamic panel evidence," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 53(6), pages 703-718, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:applec:v:53:y:2021:i:6:p:703-718
    DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2020.1813246
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00036846.2020.1813246
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00036846.2020.1813246?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Giammatteo, Michele & Iezzi, Stefano & Zizza, Roberta, 2022. "Pecunia olet. Cash usage and the underground economy," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 204(C), pages 107-127.
    2. Paraskevi Koufopoulou & Colin C. Williams & Athanassios Vozikis & Kyriakos Souliotis & Antonios Samprakos, 2021. "Estimating Shadow Economy Size in Greece 2000 - 2018: A Flexible MIMIC Approach," SPOUDAI Journal of Economics and Business, SPOUDAI Journal of Economics and Business, University of Piraeus, vol. 71(3-4), pages 23-47, July-Dece.
    3. Hakan Yilmazkuday & M. Ege Yazgan, 2009. "Effects of credit and debit cards on the currency demand," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(17), pages 2115-2123.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:applec:v:53:y:2021:i:6:p:703-718. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RAEC20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.