March 4, 2022
The Effects of Price Controls on Payment-Card Interchange Fees: A Review and Update
A review of the literature demonstrates that interchange-fee caps do more harm than good, especially for lower-income consumers.
Resources
November 4, 2021
Credit Cards and the Reverse Robin Hood Fallacy: Do Credit Card Rewards Really Steal from the Poor and Give to the Rich?
This paper considers the evidence for and against the reverse Robin Hood hypothesis, finding that the reverse Robin Hood may be more mythical than the original Robin Hood.
August 19, 2021
Doubling Down on Durbin Disaster: Interchange Fee Caps Shortchange Consumers
The U.S. economy survived the COVID-19 pandemic and associated government-imposed business shutdowns with a variety of innovations that facilitated online shopping, contactless payments, and reduced use and handling of cash, a…
November 1, 2017
Punishing Rewards: How clamping down on credit card interchange fees can hurt the middle class
Over the past 20 years, credit cards have become an increasingly popular means of paying for goods and services in Canada. Today nearly 90 percent of Canadian adults own a credit card and approximately 65 percent of all point of sale payments are made using credit cards.
September 1, 2017
The Fundamental Flaws in Behavioral L&E Arguments Against No-Surcharge Laws
During the past decade, academics—predominantly scholars of behavioral law and economics—have increasingly turned to the claimed insights of behavioral economics in order to craft novel policy proposals in many fields, most significantly consumer credit regulation.
May 1, 2017
Durbin’s Debit-Card Price Controls Hit the Poor Hardest
On Tuesday the House takes its first step toward reforming the Dodd-Frank Act when the Financial Services Committee marks-up Chairman Jeb Hensarling’s Financial Choice Act.
January 9, 2017
The Constitution Says Nothing About Behavioral Economics
Behavioral economics has taken the academy by storm over the past two decades. The Obama administration has even looked to the discipline—which posits that psychological biases frequently lead consumers to make bad economic decisions—to shape government policy.
December 21, 2016
Amicus Brief, ICLE & Scholars, Expressions Hair Design v. Schneiderman, SCOTUS
Petitioners base their First Amendment argument on two premises: first, that surcharges are “more effective” than discounts at altering consumer behavior; and second, that surcharges and discounts are economically equivalent except for their labels.
June 1, 2014
Price Controls on Payment Card Interchange Fees: The U.S. Experience
The Durbin Amendment to the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation capped debit card interchange fees for banks with assets of $10 billion. Credit card and prepaid card interchange fees were not regulated.