Federal Reserve System

About: Federal Reserve System is a other organization based out in Washington D.C., District of Columbia, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Monetary policy & Inflation. The organization has 2373 authors who have published 10301 publications receiving 511979 citations.

Market Share Inequality, the HHI, and Other Measures of the Firm-Composition of a Market

Abstract: Data for individual markets suggest that the Herfindahl- Hirschman Index does not fully account for the inequality of market shares and the number of firms in a market An empirical investigation is conducted to determine whether share inequality, number of firms, and major firm presence affect market profit rates independent of the HHI The analysis controls for efficiency, among other things Test results based on 1,684 banking markets during 1990–1992 indicate that the HHI, market share inequality, and the importance of major firms are positively related and the number of firms is negatively related to profit rates Results on several other variables also suggest that market imperfections exist in local banking markets

Technology Adoption and Consumer Payments: Evidence from Survey Data

Abstract: Consumers pay for hundreds of goods and services each year, but across households and across goods, consumers do not choose to pay the same way. This paper posits that payment choices depend in part on consumers’ propensity to adopt ne w technologies and in part on the nature of the transaction. To test this hypothesis, this paper analyzes consumer’s payment instrument use at the point of sale and for bill payment. The sample includes consumers surveyed in 2001, who are primarily users of the Internet. The results indicate that consumers who use new technology or computers are more likely to use electronic forms of payment, such as debit cards and electronic bill payments. Particularly, the use of direct deposit is a significant predictor of electronic payment use. Furthermore, the results indicate that payment choice depends on the characteristics of the transaction, such as the transaction value, the physical characteristics of the point of sale, and a bill’s frequency and value variability.

Unemployment and Vacancy Fluctuations in the Matching Model: Inspecting the Mechanism

Abstract: Andreas Hornstein (Richmond Fed economist and vice president), Per Krusell (economics professor, University of Rochester, and Richmond Fed visiting scholar), and Giovanni L. Violante (assistant professor of economics, New York University) review recent research on a widely used search model of unemployment. While the search model accounts for the qualitative features of unemployment and job-finding rates over the business cycle, it is unable to account for the magnitudes of these fluctuations. The authors conclude that when the basic search model is calibrated to generate labor market volatility of a magnitude comparable with the data, it has sharp counterfactual implications for the size and the cyclicality of the wage share and for the elasticity of unemployment to welfare benefits.