0000000000024435
AUTHOR
Tuomas Takalo
Consumer Awareness and the Use of Payment Media: Evidence from Young Finnish Consumers
In the market for payment media, some consumers use only one medium when paying for their point-of-sale transactions, while others use many. This pattern reflects the diffusion of new payment media, because a payment method innovation is typically first used simultaneously with the established methods. We study the use of multiple payment media by employing data on young Finnish consumers. We find that the use of multiple payment media is directly related to consumer awareness and that not controlling for the endogeneity of awareness can bias its effect downwards. These results suggest that increasing consumer awareness may have been underlying the rise of debit card use around the world. I…
Investor protection and business creation
We study the effects of investor protection on the availability of external finance, entrepreneurship, and creation of new firms in an equilibrium search model of private capital markets. In addition to search frictions, we examine contract frictions, specifically interim and ex post moral hazard problems stemming from entrepreneurs’ possibilities to expropriate financiers. In our model, the government chooses the level of investor protection that determines the transferability of match surplus between entrepreneurs and financiers. The results indicate that anything that increases (decreases) entrepreneurship also increases (decreases) the creation of start-ups. The effect of investor prote…
UNEMPLOYMENT PERSISTENCE AND THE SUSTAINABILITY OF EXCHANGE RATE PEGS
Published in Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Volume 57, No. 1, February 2010: 85-102
Enhancing Bank Transparency: A Re-assessment
Transparency regulation aims at reducing financial fragility by strengthening market discipline. There are however two elementary properties of banking that may render such regulation inefficient at best and detrimental at worst. First, an extensive financial safety net may eliminate the disciplinary effect of transparency regulation. Second, achieving transparency is costly for banks, as it dilutes their charter values, and hence it also reduces their private costs of risk-taking. We consider both the direct costs of complying with disclosure requirements and the indirect transparency costs stemming from imperfect property rights governing information and specify the conditions under which…
Multihoming in the Market for Payment Media: Evidence from Young Finnish Consumers
Tassa tutkimuksessa tarkastellaan sita, miksi jotkut kuluttajista kayttavat vain yhta maksuvalinetta ja toiset kuluttajat monia maksuvalineita maksaessaan paivittaisia ostoksiaan. Kayttamalla aineistoa nuorista suomalaisista kuluttajista loydamme, etta yksi tarkeimmista maksuvalineiden kayttoon vaikuttavista tekijoista on kuluttajien yleinen tietoisuus maksamiseen liittyvista kysymyksista. Instrumenttimuuttujaestimoinnit osoittavat, etta paremmin tietoiset kuluttajat kayttavat 1.2-1.3 kertaa useampaa maksuvalinetta kuin vahemman tietoiset kuluttajat. Koska monia uusia maksuvalineita kaytetaan usein aluksi olemassa olevien maksuvalineiden rinnalla, tuloksemme tukevat nakemysta, etta kuluttaj…
Law of Finance: Evidence from Finland
Although it is widely acknowledged that the benefits of corporate governance reform could be substantial, systematic evidence on such reforms is scant. We both document and evaluate a contemporary corporate governance reform by constructing 18 measures of shareholder and creditor protection for Finland for the period 1980-2000. The measures reveal that shareholder protection has been strengthened whereas creditor protection has been weakened. We also demonstrate how the reform is consistent with a reorganisation of the Finnish financial market in which a bank-centred financial system shifted from relationship-based debt finance towards increasing dominance by the stock market. We find evide…
Investor Protection and Business Creation
We study the effects of investor protection on the availability of external finance, entrepreneurship, and creation of new firms in an equilibrium search model of private capital markets. In addition to search frictions, we examine contract frictions, specifically interim and ex post moral hazard problems stemming from entrepreneurs' possibilities to expropriate financiers. In our model, the government chooses the level of investor protection that determines the transferability of match surplus between entrepreneurs and financiers. The results indicate that anything that increases (decreases) entrepreneurship also increases (decreases) the creation of start-ups. The effect of investor prote…