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Juha Honkkila

18 March 2024
ECONOMIC BULLETIN - ARTICLE
Economic Bulletin Issue 2, 2024
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Abstract
This article uses comprehensive ECB survey data to examine the narrative that a general shift towards digital payments is generating a sharp divide in payments behaviours, creating a binary world of digital “haves” and analogue “have-nots”. Our analysis challenges this narrative, revealing a more complex reality of payment behaviours at the point of sale. We focus on lack of ownership of the primary tools enabling digital payments in the euro area: debit or credit cards and payment accounts. In particular, we examine the group of people who lack at least one of these tools (either a debit or credit card or a payment account), assessing their cash payment patterns and their socio-demographic profiles against the rest of the population. The findings establish that cash remains a significant part of the payments ecosystem, even among people with both cards and accounts. Additionally, we show that the group of people without either cards or accounts has a diverse demographic profile. The analysis also assesses the reasons behind not having at least one of these two tools to enable digital payments. We show that perceived physical banking presence (defined as considering it easy to reach a bank branch or an ATM) is of limited importance, suggesting that personal choice or other demand-side factors may be of greater importance. We also show the relevance of payment habits through the persistence of cash habits even after the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The results are in line with the cash and retail payments strategies of the Eurosystem, which emphasise the need for a balanced approach that accommodates both the enduring role of cash and digital innovation.
JEL Code
E41 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Money and Interest Rates→Demand for Money
O33 : Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth→Technological Change, Research and Development, Intellectual Property Rights→Technological Change: Choices and Consequences, Diffusion Processes
E42 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Money and Interest Rates→Monetary Systems, Standards, Regimes, Government and the Monetary System, Payment Systems
E58 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit→Central Banks and Their Policies
O52 : Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth→Economywide Country Studies→Europe
19 May 2022
OCCASIONAL PAPER SERIES - No. 294
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Abstract
The paper provides an overview of studies on the social and private costs of retail payments conducted since 2013 in nine EU countries and collates the results obtained. Social costs of retail payments are the overall costs resulting from providing payment services to society and deriving from the resource costs incurred by all parties along the payment chain. Private costs, in contrast, are the costs incurred by the individual stakeholder only, such as banks and other payment intermediaries. Understanding the social and private costs of retail payments is crucial for assessing the impact of the rapidly changing retail payment landscape, such as the shift to electronic payments, and for designing strategies for moving towards cost efficient retail payments. Despite varying scopes and methodological differences, the analysis reached the following findings: a comparison of results between 2009 and 2016 in Denmark and Italy, between 2015 and 2018 in Poland and between 2009 and 2017 in Portugal, points to decreasing overall social costs for retail payments relative to gross domestic product (GDP). Moreover, the data suggest that changing payment habits – the shift to electronic payments and in particular debit cards – have an impact on unit costs, which represent the costs per transaction. The unit costs of debit card payments have decreased over time and the gap between the unit costs of cash and those for debit cards has narrowed. This suggests that the increasing number of debit card payments, to which high fixed costs are attached, has led to lower unit costs relative to those of cash. The only study on the costs of retail payments in Europe, published as an ECB occasional paper, dates from 2012 and is based on data from 2009. Although more recent surveys at national level are available, no single source exists that sheds light on recent information on the costs of retail payments in Europe. Since the national surveys follow different approaches, in terms of both scope and methodology used, for obtaining the costs of retail payments, the resu
JEL Code
D23 : Microeconomics→Production and Organizations→Organizational Behavior, Transaction Costs, Property Rights
D24 : Microeconomics→Production and Organizations→Production, Cost, Capital, Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity, Capacity
O52 : Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth→Economywide Country Studies→Europe
E42 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Money and Interest Rates→Monetary Systems, Standards, Regimes, Government and the Monetary System, Payment Systems
8 December 2021
OCCASIONAL PAPER SERIES - No. 287
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Abstract
The Consumer Expectations Survey (CES) is an important new tool for analysing euro area household economic behaviour and expectations. This new survey covers a range of important topical areas including consumption and income, inflation and gross domestic product (GDP) growth, the labour market, housing market activity and house prices, and consumer finance and credit access. The CES, which was launched as a pilot in January 2020, is a mixed frequency modular survey, which is conducted online. The survey structure and centralised data collection ensures the collection of harmonised quantitative and qualitative euro area information in a timely manner that facilitates direct cross-country comparisons. During the pilot phase, it was conducted for the six largest euro area countries and contained 10,000 individual respondents. In the context of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the CES has been used to gather useful information on the impact of the crisis on the household sector and the effectiveness of policy measures to mitigate the effects of the pandemic. The CES also collects information on the public’s overall trust in the ECB, their knowledge about its objectives and the channels through which they learn about its monetary policy and other central bank-related topics. This paper describes the key features of this new ECB survey – including its statistical properties – and offers a first evaluation of the results from the pilot phase. It also identifies a number of areas where the survey can be usefully developed further. Overall, the experience with the CES has been very positive, and the pilot survey is considered to have achieved its main objectives.
JEL Code
C42 : Mathematical and Quantitative Methods→Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics→Survey Methods
D12 : Microeconomics→Household Behavior and Family Economics→Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
D14 : Microeconomics→Household Behavior and Family Economics→Household Saving; Personal Finance
E21 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Consumption, Saving, Production, Investment, Labor Markets, and Informal Economy→Consumption, Saving, Wealth
E24 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Consumption, Saving, Production, Investment, Labor Markets, and Informal Economy→Employment, Unemployment, Wages, Intergenerational Income Distribution, Aggregate Human Capital
E31 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles→Price Level, Inflation, Deflation
22 July 2020
STATISTICS PAPER SERIES - No. 37
Expert Group on Linking Macro and Micro Data for the household sector
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Abstract
The Expert Group on Linking Macro and Micro Data for the household sector (EG-LMM) was established in December 2015 within the European System of Central Banks (ESCB) with the aim of comparing and bridging macro data (i.e. National Accounts/Financial Accounts) and micro data (i.e. the Household Finance and Consumption Survey) on wealth. Furthermore, the Expert Group also focused on developing distributional results for household macro balance sheets, starting with national data from the euro area Member States. The Expert Group assessed the extent to which these two sets of statistics could be compared and was able to link most balance sheet items. Since, following adjustments, the estimates yielded from the micro data were still lower than the macro data, an estimation method was developed to gross up the micro data to be in line with the macro data results. The methodology delivers estimates of the distribution of household wealth that are closely aligned with Financial Accounts aggregates, thereby offering valuable new information for the purposes of macroeconomic analyses based on such Financial Accounts. Further research is needed to examine the robustness of these results and to improve the estimation method taking into account country-specific features and information. The Expert Group has therefore recommended further work be undertaken with a view to compiling experimental distributional results by end-2022.
JEL Code
D31 : Microeconomics→Distribution→Personal Income, Wealth, and Their Distributions
G51 : Financial Economics
27 November 2013
WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 1619
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Abstract
The report on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress by Stiglitz, Sen and Fitoussi concludes that in the measurement of household welfare all material components should be covered, i.e. consumption, income and wealth, from both the micro as well as the macro perspective. Additionally, several other initiatives like the G20 finance ministers
JEL Code
D30 : Microeconomics→Distribution→General
D31 : Microeconomics→Distribution→Personal Income, Wealth, and Their Distributions
E01 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→General→Measurement and Data on National Income and Product Accounts and Wealth, Environmental Accounts
E21 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Consumption, Saving, Production, Investment, Labor Markets, and Informal Economy→Consumption, Saving, Wealth
Network
Household Finance and Consumption Network (HFCN)
9 January 2009
OCCASIONAL PAPER SERIES - No. 100
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Abstract
The first part of this paper provides a brief survey of the recent literature that employs survey data on household finance and consumption. Given the breadth of the topic, it focuses on issues that are particularly relevant for policy, namely: i) wealth effects on consumption, ii) housing prices and household indebtedness, iii) retirement income, consumption and pension reforms, iv) access to credit and credit constraints, v) financial innovation, consumption smoothing and portfolio selection and vi) wealth inequality. The second part uses concrete examples to summarise how results from such surveys feed into policy-making within the central banks that already conduct such surveys.
JEL Code
C42 : Mathematical and Quantitative Methods→Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics→Survey Methods
D12 : Microeconomics→Household Behavior and Family Economics→Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
D14 : Microeconomics→Household Behavior and Family Economics→Household Saving; Personal Finance
Network
Eurosystem Monetary Transmission Network