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Scope and scale economies in Federal Reserve payment processing

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Abstract

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 processing. In this paper, we estimate the scope and scale economies and the technical change in the Federal Reserve's provision of payments processing from 1990-2000. We find considerable scale economies and evidence of some scope economies for the provision of automated clearinghouse, fedwire, and book-entry services no matter whether we specify a separable quadratic or a translog cost function. In addition, we find that disembodied technical change also attributed to the overall reduction in costs through the 1990s.

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  • Robert M. Adams & Paul W. Bauer & Robin C. Sickles, 2002. "Scope and scale economies in Federal Reserve payment processing," Working Papers (Old Series) 0213, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedcwp:0213
    DOI: 10.26509/frbc-wp-200213
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    Cited by:

    1. Wilko Bolt & David B. Humphrey, 2005. "Public Good Aspects of TARGET: Natural Monopoly, Scale Economies, and Cost Allocation," DNB Working Papers 036, Netherlands Central Bank, Research Department.
    2. Gilbert, R. Alton & Wheelock, David C. & Wilson, Paul W., 2004. "New evidence on the Fed's productivity in providing payments services," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 28(9), pages 2175-2190, September.
    3. Beijnen, Christine & Bolt, Wilko, 2009. "Size matters: Economies of scale in European payments processing," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 203-210, February.
    4. Bolt, Wilko & Humphrey, David, 2005. "Public good issues in TARGET: natural monopoly, scale economies, network effects and cost allocation," Working Paper Series 505, European Central Bank.
    5. Humphrey, David B., 2010. "Retail payments: New contributions, empirical results, and unanswered questions," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(8), pages 1729-1737, August.
    6. Robert DeYoung & Douglas Evanoff & Philip Molyneux, 2009. "Mergers and Acquisitions of Financial Institutions: A Review of the Post-2000 Literature," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 36(2), pages 87-110, December.

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    Keywords

    Federal Reserve banks - Costs; Payment systems;

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