Credit cards and other electronic payment vehicles are a large and increasingly important part of how we do business. Credit cards allow consumers all over the world to have instantaneous access to credit to transact in both traditional in-person retail settings and over the Internet with businesses they will never see. In the U.S., we have become accustomed to paying for an increasing share of our purchases through electronic means.

But behind their convenience and speed lies an often misunderstood economics of consumer credit, two-sided markets, and network systems. Congressional action to regulate these markets must take into consideration the unique nature of this changing form of currency.

Professor Todd Zywicki and Professor Geoffrey Manne provide an overview of the trends and data related to credit card usage, as well as explain the mechanisms which allow them to exist.

Leah Brannon and co-author Kathleen Bradish, both of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, offer a skeptical view…

Read the full piece here. 

This should be an interesting case to watch.  As I’ve discussed, if one excludes policy speeches and restricts focus to enforcement action and activity, it has been thus far difficult to distinguish the Obama Antitrust Division from the Bush II Antitrust Division when it comes to single firm or allegedly exclusionary conduct.  But the DOJ’s recent announcement of case against Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan looks like the DOJ’s first major “exclusionary” conduct case — despite the fact that it is brought under Section of the Sherman Act rather than Section 2 (there is also a state antitrust law claim).

Read the full piece here. 

In response to a week with what the NFL perceives to be a large number of tackles causing injury, the league is ready to announce a new policy in which players will be suspended for certain hits the league deems to dangerous or too likely to cause injury.  This is a change from the NFL’s former policy in which the default rule was to impose a fine on players.

Read the full piece here. 

As per usual, Justin Wolfers is there to clean up misconceptions about the data and explain what is really going on.  As it turns out, claims that recessions have killed marriage have been grossly exaggerated.  Here’s a picture Justin shows to demonstrate the point (the gray bars are recessions).

Read the full piece here. 

Ezra Klein has an interesting blog post covering Peter Diamond’s nomination to Federal Reserve Board.  The standard refrain in this debate has been something like: “See! The Republicans blocked Diamond and now he won the Nobel — don’t they look silly now.”  I don’t find the particular issue of comparing Diamond’s qualifications as an economist to those qualifications required of a Board member all too interesting and so I wont comment on that here.  Though I should say here so we can get to the point of the post that I believe Diamond should be confirmed.

Read the full piece here. 

I was waiting to write something about today’s announcement of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics being awarded to Diamond, Mortensen, and Pissarides. Josh has already provided his thoughts and provided links to comments by Ed Glaeser and Steve Levitt, respectively. As they describe it, the honorees’ research provides a theory of unemployment, explaining why we see willing buyers and willing sellers of labor go without finding trading partners, thus resulting in persistent unemployment. The Nobel committee paints it a bit more broadly, explaining…

Read the full piece here. 

I hope to have something intelligent and interesting to say about this year’s prize to Diamond, Mortensen, and Pissarides — not as much as last year, of course — but for now I just have a small snark. Here’s me, a couple of weeks ago…

Read the full piece here.

In a front-page article entitled Congress Staffers Gain from Trading in Stocks, the Wall Street Journal reports that “72 aides on both sides of the aisle traded shares of companies that their bosses help oversee.” That finding was based on an “analysis of more than 3,000 disclosure forms covering trading activity by Capitol Hill staffers for 2008 and 2009.”

Read the full piece here.